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315^ t^t g>ame 0uttior 



Park Street Papers 

John Greenleaf Whittier : A Memoir 

Walt Whitman 

The Amateur Spirit 

A Study of Prose Fiction 

The Powers at Play 

The Plated City 

Salem Kittredge and Other Stories 

The Broughton House 



Park -Street Papers 



T5 2.54S 







COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY BLISS PERRY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October, igo8 



TO 

GEORGE H. MIFFLIN 

MAKER OF BEAUTIFUL BOOKS 

WHOSE LOYALTY TO HIGH STANDARDS 

HAS UPHELD 

AT NO. 4 PARK STREET 

THE GREAT TRADITIONS OF PUBLISHING 

AND WHOSE KINDNESS OF HEART 

HAS ENDEARED HIM 

TO HIS ASSOCIATES 



Preface 

The papers now gathered into this volume, in 
the author s tenth year of service as editor of 'The 
Atlantic Monthly, are concerned with the maga- 
zine itself, with its pleasant home in Park Street, 
and with some of the writers who have given 
distinction to its pages. Under the general title 
of "-^ Atlantic Prologues'' I have reprinted some 
of the brief T'oastmaster addresses with which, 
in recent years, I have been in the habit of intro- 
ducing each January number of the magazine. 
Although these informal addresses discuss pri- 
marily the surroundings and spirit of the Atlantic 
Monthly, they may also serve to suggest some of 
the constant problems involved in the art and 
mystery of magazine editing. It has happened 
that the centenaries of the births of several of the 
most famous early contributors to the Atlantic 
have fallen within the period of my own editor- 
ship. 'The essays upon Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
and Whittier are studies prompted by these anni- 
versary occasions. 'The paper upon 'Thomas Bailey 
[ vii] 



Preface 

Aldrichy one of the vivid and delightful figures in 
the already shadowy line of Atlantic editors ^ was 
written immediately after his death in 1907. / 
have also included in this volume^ which begins 
and ends with the Atlantic ^ a paper prepared for 
the Fiftieth Anniversary number ^ in November ^ 
1907, dealing with F. H, Underwood, whose 
share in founding the magazine has never received 
quite adequate recognition, 

B. P. 

Cambridge, 1908. 



Contents 

Atlantic Prologues 

Number 4 Park Street .... 3 

Catering for the Public . . . 16 

The Cheerless Reader .... 30 

"A Readable Proposition" . . . 39 

Turning the Old Leaves . . -52 

The Centenary of Hawthorne . . 63 

The Centenary of Longfellow . .105 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich . . . 141 

Whittier for To-day . . . • '7^ 

The Editor who was never the Editor 203 



Atlantic Prologues 




Number 4 Park Street 



In the days before the souvenir postal card was 
employed to advertise every corner of the globe, 
it was always a pleasure to receive one of those 
tinted cards decorated with a sprawling picture 
of some German town, and bearing a word of 
hearty German greeting. Gruss aus Heidelberg! 
Or perhaps it was Jena, Munich, or Nurem- 
berg that furnished the cheap little picture and 
friendly word that wished you welfare and good 
cheer. How that pleasant custom warmed one's 
heart toward the far-away, thrifty city, and the 
old friends and old ways ! It refreshed one's 
memory better than any Baedeker, — that sim- 
ple, big-chested, deep-throated word Gruss! 
And it emboldens the Atlantic's Toastmaster 
to voice in similar fashion the salutation of 
the magazine to its readers. Greeting, Cheerful 
Readers all ! Let it be a greeting from Num- 
ber 4 Park Street. 

[3] 



Park-Street Papers 

And what and where is Park Street ? The 
Atlantic prints those words upon its cover, but 
gives no souvenir picture of the place. It is a 
short, sloping, prosperous little highway in what 
Rufus Choate called our "denationalized" Bos- 
ton town. It begins at Park Street Church, on 
Brimstone Corner. (If you ever happened to 
read, on a chilly Sunday afternoon in boyhood, 
the sermons of the Rev. Dr. Edward Dorr 
Griffin, the first minister of Park Street Church, 
you will perceive how Brimstone Corner won 
its name.) Thence it climbs leisurely westward 
toward the Shaw Memorial and the State House 
for twenty rods or so, and ends at the George 
Ticknor house, on the corner of Beacon. The 
street is bordered on the south by the Common, 
and its solid-built, sunward-fronting houses 
have something of a holiday air, perhaps be- 
cause the green, outdoors world lies just at their 
feet. They are mostly given over, in these lat- 
ter days, to trade. The habitual passer is con- 
scious of a pleasant blend of bookshops, flowers, 
prints, silverware, Scotch suitings, more books, 
more prints, a club or two, a Persian rug, — and 
then Park Street is behind him. 

Number 4 is the round-arched doorway 

[4] 



Number 4 Park Street 

halfway up the street, between the Scotch suit- 
ings and the Book Room. Poets often pass it 
with haughty and averted face, — the face of 
the Temporarily Rejected, — and yet some- 
times, on the Atlantic's publication days, they 
maybe detected standing outside the show win- 
dows of the Book Room, and reading their 
names upon the fresh cover of the magazine with 
that bland emotion of publicity which makes 
the whole world kin. Park Street is a more 
quiet abiding-place than the early home of 
the magazine in the Old Corner Bookstore, or 
the later quarters on Tremont Street. Even 
within the substantial walls of Number 4, built 
as it was for a family mansion, and long iden- 
tified with a widely honored name, the maga- 
zine used to flit upstairs and down like a rest- 
less guest. Mr. Howells's tiny sanctum was on 
the second floor; and many a delighted caller 
remembers that third-floor back room, looking 
out upon the Granary Burying-Ground, where 
Mr, Aldrich was wont to mitigate the severi- 
ties of his position with an Irish setter and a 
pipe. 

As these words are written, the restless 
guest has settled down for a while in a spa- 

[5] 



Park-Street Papers 

cious sunny room on a level with the elm- 
tops. Once, at least, in its century-old history, 
the room was the chamber of a bride. Here are 
her initials, scratched upon the window-pane 
with her ring, while she was waiting for the car- 
riage to bear her to the church, more than forty 
years ago. Later, it was the nest of a quaint 
old pair of abolitionists, who, when the days of 
their warfare were accomplished, here lived out 
their lives in peace. Many pairs of eyes have 
gazed into the plain marble fireplace, or out 
across the treetops toward the open country, 
without leaving behind them any memory or 
sign. The walls of the room now speak of lit- 
erary associations merely. They are hung with 
portraits of former editors, and with autograph 
manuscripts of the brilliant group of writers 
who gave to the Atlantic its early fame. Yet 
some human quality other than literary, some 
touch of the ardor, the curiosity, the silent en- 
durance of the men and women who have lived 
within the stout brick walls of Number 4, may 
still be present here, secretly fashioning the for- 
tunes of the Atlantic of to-day. 

Does this lurking genius loci affect the maga- 
zine, whether its conductors will or no ? Take, 
[6] 



Number 4 Park Street 

for instance, the view from these sunny win- 
dows. They look down upon the mild activities 
of Park Street, to the left upon the black lines 
of people streaming in and out of the Subway, 
in front toward the Common with its fountain 
that never flows and its Frog Pond gleaming 
through the elms, and to the right toward the 
monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Is 
all this fairly typical of American life, — its work 
and play, its resourcefulness and its careless- 
ness, its tolerant respect for the past, its post- 
humous honors gladly paid to the leaders of 
forlorn hopes ? Or is it merely a view of Boston, 
something local, provincial ; and our outlook 
from the Park Street windows, instead of sum- 
marizing and symbolizing the American, the 
human spectacle, is it only "Frogpondium '* — 
as the scoffers have dubbed it — after all ? 

It is an interesting question, and one which 
the readers of the magazine must answer for 
themselves. Very likely they can determine, 
better than any observer stationed at Number 
4 Park Street, whether the Atlantic is provin- 
cial or national. Or rather, since every maga- 
zine is necessarily provincial in some sort, it is 
for them to say whether the Atlantic's provin- 

[7] 



Park-Street Papers 

cialism is of that honest kind which is rooted in 
the soil, and hence is truly representative of and 
contributory to the national life. 

Certain it is, on the one hand, that the Atlan- 
tic has always been peculiarly identified with 
Boston. " Our Boston magazine," Emerson 
called it somewhat proudly, shortly after the 
first number was published. " Of Boston, Bos- 
tonese," wrote a New Orleans critic the other 
day, — "full of visionary ideals, impressed by 
a certain dogmatic scholarship, and when not 
riding any one of its literary hobbies, pro- 
foundly intellectual." Other contemporary no- 
tices are not always so gracious in their iden- 
tification of Bostonian characteristics with the 
traits of the Atlantic. The faithful clipping 
bureaus furnish a choice collection of denunci- 
atory epithets, aimed partly at Boston, partly at 
Number 4 Park Street, whenever the politics 
and philosophy of the magazine are not such as 
our journalistic friends approve. 

Yet neither the original founders of the 
Atlantic Monthly, nor any of its conductors, 
have ever purposed to make it an organ of 
Bostonian or New England opinion. Its aim 
from the first has been national. It has striven 

[8] 



Number 4 Park Street 

to give expression to the best thought of the 
whole country, and an examination of the long 
rows of its bound volumes is the most convinc- 
ing evidence of the cosmopolitan character of 
its articles. In the earlier years of its existence, 
it is true that the majority of the best-known 
American writers were living within twenty-five 
miles of the Massachusetts State House. These 
authors, by reason of their unsigned, but easily 
recognized contributions, gave the magazine 
the reputation which it has been fortunate 
enough to maintain. But before the Civil War 
was over, the number of different writers for 
the Atlantic had greatly increased, and the "red- 
eyed men" — as Emerson called them — who 
examined the manuscripts which were sub- 
mitted to it found themselves struggling, like 
their successors to-day, with a flood of black- 
ened paper from every quarter of the country. 
There is no longer any " literary centre " in 
America. The publishing centre is New York, 
but our writers cannot now be " rounded up " in 
the old easy fashion. All of the greater Ameri- 
can magazines disclaim a special "sphere of 
influence." They pride themselves upon their 
national quality, and fear the provincial note. 

[9] 



Park-Street Papers 

The publishers of many periodicals have rea- 
soned that the readiest way of acquiring the air 
of cosmopolitanism is to give their magazine 
the imprint of the commercial capital of the 
country. Witness the opinion of that shrewd- 
est of prospectus-makers, Edgar Allan Poe. 
In the last year of his life he was invited by a 
Mr. E. H. N. Patterson to become the editor 
of a new magazine. In Mr. Patterson's judg- 
ment, "The Boston Reviewers are, generally, 
too much affected by local prejudices to give 
impartial criticisms; the Philadelphia maga- 
zines have become mere monthly bulletins 
for booksellers." He therefore proposes to 
found, under Poe's editorship, an "influen- 
tial periodicar* at Oquawka, 111. "Oquawka," 
he admits, "is comparatively an unimportant 
point, but I think that such being the case 
would not injure at all the circulation of the 
magazine. . . . Here I can enjoy every mail 
advantage that I could at St. Louis, being but 
thirty hours' travel from that city, and being 
situated immediately upon the Mississippi, 
with daily connection with the Northern Canal 
and St. Louis, and directly upon the great daily 
mail line from the East, through Pennsylvania, 

[ lo] 



Number 4 Park Street 

Ohio, and Indiana." This is very charming. 
But Poe, while assenting to the proposal, and 
incidentally borrowing from his new publisher 
fifty dollars on account, balks at that ominous 
word Oquawka. " I submit to you," he replies, 
"whether it be not possible to put on our title- 
page Published simultaneously at New Tork and 
St, Louis — or something equivalent." 

There speaks, with unashamed frankness, 
your seasoned editor and author. To live in 
Oquawka, and yet to convey the impression 
of being "Published simultaneously at New 
York"! What a dream it is! And how it makes 
cowards of us all! The Atlantic, at least, owns 
to its Oquawka; it puts "4 Park Street, Bos- 
ton" in bold-faced type upon its cover, and 
prints "New York" in diminutive italics. 

But rusticity will betray itself; your man 
from the provinces remains a provincial to the 
end. Very possibly that lurking genius loci 
controls the Atlantic, and makes it, not an All- 
American, as one would like to think it, but 
only a Boston magazine. In vain, perhaps, 
does it summon men reared in Ohio, North 
Carolina, or New York to become its editors ; 
in vain does it select its writers from every state 

C "] 



Park-Street Papers 

In the Union. Doubtless the influence of the old 
brick mansion, in the pleasant provincial street, 
pervades, like a subtle spell, every editorial act 
of invitation, acceptance, or rejection. One can- 
not escape it even by that simple device of put- 
ting a few hundred miles between oneself and 
one's desk. Number 4 Park Street still keeps 
its viewless, immitigable grip upon the fleeing 
editor. It gives him what the Atlantic's pros- 
perous Christian Scientist neighbors call "ab- 
sent treatment.*' In vain does he mingle with 
"common fowlers, tobacco-takers, and other 
persons who can give no good account of how 
they spend their time"; in vain does he seat 
himself at noontide upon some stump in the 
North Country, light an innocent pipe, and 
count the fish in his basket. Telegrams find 
their way through ; the very birds of the air 
keep twittering of articles; Park Street and 
"the traditions of the Atlantic" are with him 
still. The skies change, but not that habit of 
trying all things — even the trout in one's bas- 
ket — by the test of "availability." It is a case 
oi coelum non animum. 

Well, so let it be! Here is the Atlantic for 
better or worse, — stamped ineffaceably, it may 

[ 12] 



Number 4 Park Street 

be, with the characteristics of its physical envi- 
ronment. An up-to-date journal has just re- 
marked that "the venerable Park Street publi- 
cation has bats in its belfry/' Very likely. But 
is not its habitation just back of the steeple of 
Park Street Church? Do not its rear windows 
look out upon a graveyard, and its front win- 
dows upon that sorriest symbol of New Eng- 
land sterility, a fountain which has long since 
forgotten how to flow ? Is a mere magazine to be 
luckier than the New Englander himself? He 
too, poor soul, tries to be friendly with all the 
world, but he cannot learn that trick of the 
"glad hand," so easily acquired elsewhere. He 
would like to be hospitable, but somehow his 
fountains do not spontaneously bubble with oil 
and wine. By nature he is no hater of his kind, 
and yet Heaven has placed him in a climate 
best described by Cotton Mather: ^^New Eng- 
land, a country where splenetic Maladies are 
prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any 
other, hath afforded numberless instances, of 
even pious people, who have contracted these 
Melancholy Indispositions y which have unhinged 
them from all service or comfort; yea, not a 
few persons have been hurried thereby to lay 

C 13] 



Park-Street Papers 

Violent Hands upon themselves at the last. 
These are among the unsearchable Judgments 
of God." 

If the Atlantic shares these inexplicable de- 
fects of the New England qualities, will not its 
readers accept its greetings none the less? For 
the Atlantic, upon the word of the Toastmas- 
ter, means well. Jesting aside, it is mightily- 
proud of its own little corner of the world. It 
has a stubborn affection for the simple ways of 
the older American life. It loves the memory 
of the gentlemen and scholars and men of let- 
ters who once frequented Park Street. It is 
housed more happily in the ancient Quincy 
mansion than in any tall office-building of Gath 
or Askelon. The skyscraper has not yet be- 
come the sacred emblem of America, nor has it 
been proved that the vortex of the mob is the 
best place wherein to observe and comment 
upon the growth of our civilization. Park Street 
is somewhat apart from the insane whirl which 
is miscalled "progress." Yet the magazine 
published at Number 4 somehow made a place 
for itself before the days of "commercial inva- 
sions " and " world records " and "Anglo-Saxon 
domination"; and it will continue to prosper 

[ 14] 



Number 4 Park Street 

long after the fads of the present hour have given 
place to others. If ghosts of dead abolitionists 
still haunt its sanctum, they are honest ghosts, 
and will do the editorial policy no harm. And 
if the outlook from its windows is only upon 
Boston Common instead of upon one of the 
great arteries of the world's trade, here, never- 
theless, upon the corner of that Common, is 
something which far more than makes amends. 
No magazine that has the Shaw Memorial be- 
fore its windows can be quite indifferent to hu- 
man liberty, or be persuaded that commercial 
supremacy is the noblest ideal of an American 
citizen. 



Catering for the Public 

The best that may be said for Thoreau's re- 
gimen of beans is, not that that immortal diet 
was merely wholesome or cheap, or even that it 
was transmuted into delightful literature, — but 
that Thoreau liked it. H e was catering for him- 
self and to himself. When Byron came of age, 
he provided the conventional roast ox and ale 
for his tenants in honor of his majority, and then 
dined alone upon his favorite delicacy, eggs and 
bacon. He catered for his public first, and to 
himself afterwards. But the only editors who 
permit themselves such solitary luxury of per- 
sonal indulgence are the young men who own, 
write, and print the queer little 5X7 magazines 
with still queerer names. They give no host- 
ages to fortune except paper, printer's ink, and 
time. If you would seek a better analogy to the 
real editorial function, follow some excellent citi- 
zen of Baltimore, or of a foreign city where mar- 

[ 16] 



Catering for the Public 

keting bears as yet no social stigma, as he jour- 
neys to the public market, with basket upon his 
careful arm, intent upon selecting a dinner for 
his family. 

Observe him. For all his apparent leisureli- 
ness of manner, the good gentleman is carrying 
the burden of a theory. He has certain con- 
victions, more or less definite, about desirable 
combinations of food and drink. Convention, 
which is only common sense deposited for long 
periods upon the reluctant mind of our species, 
has dictated to him some rude outline of a bill 
of fare. He has individual partialities of taste, 
but he has also tolerably distinct ideas of what 
is possible for his purse. Terrapin and cham- 
pagne must be for high days only. Our worthy 
householder has also some fixed notions as to 
what is best for his family. They will thrive 
better, he knows, upon honest soups and roasts 
than upon cocktails and eclairs. Thus, as he 
makes his way from stall to stall, does he select, 
from the countless appetizing things displayed, 
the material for a foreordained dinner. He buys 
it, precisely as he would gather harmoniously 
colored flowers for a bouquet, and tucking it 
into that ample basket, takes it home in all in- 

[17] 



Park-Street Papers 

nocence of heart. It is his affair, after all. If he 
and his family like what is purchased, well and 
good, provided their tastes do not become a 
public scandal, or their cookery grow too men- 
acing to their neighbors* peace of mind. It is a 
simple matter, this catering for a family table, 
though not quite so simple as Thoreau's beans 
or Byron's eggs and bacon. But where is the 
analogy to editing a magazine? Is it so cun- 
ningly hidden away in this image of the house- 
holder that one cannot find it at all? 

"Patience a moment,'*-— to quote the most 
impatient of poets. We are getting " warm," as 
the children say, and in a minute more we shall 
discover our complete and archetypal editor. 
He is foreshadowed in the market-haunting 
householder, but he is — the being who keeps 
boarders. 

Is it not so? The boarding-house keeper is 
no vulgar caterer to the public in general. He 
leaves that art to the yellow journal and the cor- 
ner saloon. But he does cater for that portion 
of the public who have done him the honor to 
become his guests. Individual dietary theory 
may still lurk in his imagination, but it must not 
be over-indulged. His own favorite beans or 

C i8] 



Catering for the Public 

eggs and bacon will be too monotonous for his 
boarders. The family responsibilities of the 
householder linger in him, too; he must not 
poison his boarders, or subtly undermine their 
faith in human nature. Yet he has his weekly 
or monthly bills to meet, and he can meet them 
only by pleasing his patrons. Not what his 
boarders ought to like, if they would grow truly 
fat and wise and good, but what they do like, 
gradually comes to affect the policy of even the 
most stubborn-souled Provider. 

The Toastmaster wonders if any readers of 
the Atlantic recall the once famous pension in 
Paris, kept by M. Alphonse Doucette, "for- 
merly professor at Lyons"? It was known in 
the Anglo-American colonies, from one end of 
Europe to the other, as the pension desvioletteSy 
— spoken with a smile. Yes, one smiled at M. 
Doucette's amiable vagaries, but one kept on 
going there, and paying a whole franc more a 
day than was charged at ^.nj pension of its class 
in Paris. For, as every one hastened to explain, 
it was really an admirably kept establishment, 
— and then, there were the violets ! Every night 
at dinner, in season or out of season, there was 
a tiny boutonniere of them for each gentleman, 

[19] 



Park-Street Papers 

and a corsage bouquet of violets was laid by each 
lady's plate. And Monsieur himself always sat 
at the head of the table and addressed his varie- 
gated company with the most incessant and 
exquisite drollery. Only a franc more than was 
charged at the commonplace pensions, and all 
those violets thrown in! 

It happened that the Toastmaster returned 
to the Pension Doucette very late one night, 
after witnessing a most dreary seven-act tragedy 
at the Fran9ais. In the little office ofFthe dining- 
room sat M. Doucette in his shirt-sleeves, drink- 
ing sugared water, and looking more tragic than 
Mounet-Sully at his worst. Something had 
gone wrong. It was a trivial matter enough, but 
the former professor at Lyons opened his whole 
heart. Never before or since — save once in 
a Vermont woodshed on a Sunday morning, 
when his host was morosely freezing the ice 
cream for dinner and imparting with each slow 
turn of the crank some darkly pessimistic gen- 
eralization on the subject of summer boarders 
— has the Toastmaster seen deeper into the 
Caterer's professional soul. Oh, the sorrows of 
trying to hold the fickle taste of English and 
American visitors in Paris ! 
[ao] 



Catering for the Public 

" But there are the violets," I ventured. 

"The violets!" M. Doucette spread his 
palms. 

A ghastly suspicion dawned upon me. Was 
his love for violets only a pretense ? 

"I loathe violets ! " he broke out. " A has 
les violettes I The odor and the sight of them 
are nauseating to me. But it is too late. If I 
were to give up the violets, I should lose my 
trademark, my prestige, my clientele. My pen- 
sionnaires expect violets ! " 

I saw the trap he had laid for himself. And, 
oddly enough, my thoughts wandered to the 
veteran editor of a famous magazine, who was 
once discussing two sonnets by the same poet. 
He had accepted one and rejected the other; 
and now he was praising the one he had re- 
turned. 

" But it was the other which you printed ! " 
exclaimed his puzzled auditor. 

" Oh, that was my choice for the magazine, 
certainly; but personally — " And he waved 
his cigar stub in a parabola that opened up in- 
finite distances of perspective into the editorial 
consciousness. Was it possible that he, too, 
loathed his violets ? 

[21] 



Park-Street Papers 

And yet, why not ? Not to speak it pro- 
fanely, does anybody suppose that Mr. Mun- 
sey's favorite reading is the Munsey Storiettes? 
Does " the sound of the swashbuckler swash- 
ing on his buckler " seem less humorous to the 
editors who encourage it than it does to Mr. 
Howells, who has laid aside his editorial armor 
and can smile at the weaknesses of his former 
fellow warriors? Do the peaceful editors of the 
"Outlook" really thrill with those stern praises 
of fighting men and fighting machines which 
adorn its secularized pages? Or does the tal- 
ented conductor of the " Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal" really . . . No, he cannot. As the Toast- 
master makes these too daring interrogations, 
it seems to him that he perceives a faint odor 
of violets, — not the shy flower of the woodside, 
but the brazen-faced, tightly laced boutonniere 
of the pavement, — in a word, the violet of 
commerce. 

That single glimpse of M. Doucette in his 
shirt-sleeves and in his despondency ought not 
to obliterate the memory of a hundred nights 
when, clothed in proper evening attire, he 
reigned gloriously over his long table-full of 



Catering for the Public 

guests, giving and receiving pleasure. When 
all is going well, catering has its innocent de- 
lights and its honest satisfactions. To invent a 
new dish, or to serve an old one with recog- 
nized skill, is to share at once the artist's joy 
and the bourgeois's complacency. Yet having 
once beheld the confidential shirt-sleeves, one 
is thenceforward subtly aware of them, hidden 
though they be for another hundred nights by 
the dress coat. They are there, those shirt- 
sleeves of the Caterer, and his workaday re- 
sponsibilities are inescapable. In vain does Sir 
Leslie Stephen, in one of those papers which 
not long ago charmed the Atlantic's readers, 
blithely assert that an editor "only vouches 
for the readability of the article, not for the 
correctness of the opinions expressed." It 
is a millennial dream. It asks too much of 
human nature. Shall the Toastmaster dare to 
say, " My dear guests, I am no mycologist. 
This dish may be toadstool or mushroom for 
all I know, but I assure you that the odor is 
appetizing"? 

Alas, it is true that he is no mycologist; he 
prints every month a dozen articles on topics 
concerning which he knows nothing, as well as 

[23] 



Park-Street Papers 

a half-dozen more whose views of politics and 
society and criticism are the very opposite of 
his own. He vouches for their readability, that 
is all, — and sometimes this is quite enough to 
take upon his conscience. But the public is 
shrewdly suspicious of this happy impartiality 
of ignorance. It keeps reminding the Toast- 
master that he is Caterer too ; that he has the 
responsibility of buying the provisions in the 
open market as well as merely arranging them 
on the table and announcing the bill of fare. 

In one sense, the public is quite right. Some 
one must take the responsibility of decision. 
But the public sometimes forgets how the Ca- 
terer must make up in faith what he lacks in 
special knowledge. He depends upon the hon- 
esty of the marketmen, the producers. This 
confidence is rarely betrayed. M. Doucette 
would have died of shame, no doubt, if he had 
really served toadstools to his trusting com- 
pany. Yet it never happened. His mushrooms 
were always mushrooms. It is the contributors 
to a magazine like the Atlantic who maintain, 
after all, the fine traditions of the institution. 
For purposes of convenience, it is assumed that 
the editor knows what he is purchasing. In 

[ ^4 ] 



Catering for the Public 

reality, he is only exercising faith in writers who 
know what they are writing, and whose views 
— strange as it may seem ! — may be worth con- 
sideration even if they do not harmonize with 
his own. The monthly table of contents is nei- 
ther more nor less than such a confession of 
faith. It cannot be made without a certain hardi- 
hood. In camp, when it is your week to cook, 
you can always enjoy the luxury of finding 
fault with the man who laid in the supplies : he 
should have bought more bacon or a different 
brand of coffee, and why did he forget the 
onions ? Even the suave conductor of the din- 
ing-car, who presents you with a menu which 
requests explicit criticism of meals and service, 
can shrug his shoulders and explain that he did 
not buy that steak himself But here in the 
magazine world there is no shuffling. Month 
by month what is in the larder comes on to the 
table, and if it is mouldy or tough or raw the 
Toastmaster cannot blame the Caterer, for he 
is both in one: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the 
red slayer and the slain. 

Who is there that can tell, after all, precisely 
how to please even the most indulgent of pub- 
lics ? The editors of the Atlantic have always 

[25] 



Park-Street Papers 

been drafted from the ranks of its contributors; 
mere contributors, who once inclosed stamps 
for the return of manuscript and waited and 
wondered if it would prove " magazinable." 
How can such a one, drawn in a moment, like 
Browning's conscript, 

«* From the safe glad rear to the dreadful van," 

pretend that he has been invested with infalli- 
bility ? " I am fain to think it vivacious," wrote 
Lowell of a certain Contributor's Club which 
he was submitting to the editor in 1890, nearly 
thirty years after his own editorship closed, 
" but if your judgment verify my fears, don't 
scruple to return it. I can easily make other 
disposition of it, or at worst there is always the 
waste-basket." His Club was accepted, in spite 
of Lowell's fears, — and, as it happened, it was 
his last contribution to the magazine. But 
whenever an author's manuscript carries the 
bunker of the editor's judgment, there remains 
a far more formidable hazard still, namely, the 
unknown taste of the public. 

Who really understands it? Did not Emer- 
son, that most unmercenary of editors, accept 
for the "Dial," pro honoris causa and with a 
[.6] 



Catering for the Public 

sinking heart, that article of Theodore Parker's 
on the Reverend John Pierpont, which never- 
theless, to Emerson's astonishment, sold out 
the entire edition ? Did not Coleridge, an equally 
unworldly member of the guild, lose five hun- 
dred subscribers to the ill-starred "Watchman *' 
on the publication of the very second number, 
by "a censurable application of a text from 
Isaiah as its motto " ? 

Of one thing only may the editor be sure. N o 
matter what dish he serves, some one at the 
table will be positive that it ought not to have 
been brought on at all, or that it should have 
been cooked very differently. If the Atlantic 
has dispatched a representative to Borrioboola 
Gha to report upon the condition of blankets- 
and-top-boots in that unhappy country, some 
correspondent will turn up, as soon as the arti- 
cle is printed, to prove that he himself was the 
sole originator of the blankets-and-top-boots 
idea, and that the Atlantic has misrepresented 
the blessed work now going forward there. May 
he not have ample space in the next number 
to reply? Well, very likely he ought to have 
it. But the unlucky editor, puzzling at that 
moment over the problem of finding space in 

[27] 



Park-Street Papers 

the issue three months hence, thinks with a 
sigh of M. Doucette^s pension. For at those 
long table-d'hote dinners no one was expected 
to care for every course ; if you allowed a dish 
to pass or left it barely tasted, you must for that 
very reason talk the more agreeably with your 
neighbor; and if individual clamor over some 
unfortunate concoction reached the quick ear 
of M. Doucette, with what infinite ease and wit 
did he offer the critic the honor of planning and 
preparing the next meal in person, — an invi- 
tation which was somehow never accepted. Be- 
sides, as M. Doucette used sometimes to hint, 
when flushed with his success, if one did not 
like the pension des violettes, there were plenty 
of other pensions across the way, eager for pat- 
ronage. 

Is all this too intimate a survey of the edi- 
torial pantry and kitchen? Pray consider it 
nothing more than the shirt-sleeved conversa- 
tion of that garrulous M. Doucette, provoked 
into real confidence by an unusual hour. For- 
get, if you will, the unskilled service, and re- 
member that market-place and kitchen are as 
yet imperfect places in an imperfect, although 
[28] 



Catering for the Public 

Improvable and improving world. And be tol- 
erant of the violets, purchased with such secret 
anxiety of heart, and laid by each plate with 
such grace as Park Street may afford. 



The Cheerless Reader 

One of the most genial of Atlantic essayists 
has lamented the disappearance of the Gentle 
Reader. Can it be possible that the Cheerful 
Reader is disappearing, too? One is loath to 
believe it; for if the Gentle Reader and the 
Cheerful Reader are both to vanish, and maga- 
zines are to be edited — as Dr. Crothers hinted 
— for the benefit of the Intelligent Reading 
Public merely, the world of periodical litera- 
ture will be a dismal world indeed. Yet if one 
were to judge from those Letters to the Editor, 
which the New York "Sun," for instance, 
prints, and the Atlantic, for another instance, 
does not print, the quality of cheerfulness is 
nowadays sadly strained. What streams of sor- 
rowful correspondence are directed to 4 Park 
Street after each issue of this magazine! And so 
few of them seem to flow from the pen of the 
Cheerful Reader ! Perhaps the Cheerful Reader 
[30] 



The Cheerless Reader 

is busy earning his living, — too busy to write. 
It may be that it is only the Cheerless Persons 
who have leisure to take their pens in hand and 
" write to the editor." 

If the Atlantic Monthly were a "reposi- 
tory"; if it confined itself to the discussion of 
Roman antiquities, or the sonnets of Words- 
worth, or the planting of the colony of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, none but the specialists would con- 
cern themselves with the opinions expressed in 
its pages. But it happens to be particularly in- 
terested in this present world; curious about the 
actual condition of politics and society, of sci- 
ence and commerce, of art and literature. Above 
all, it is engrossed with the lives of the men and 
women who are making America what it is 
and is to be. The Atlantic is fortunate enough 
to command the services of many writers who 
have something to say upon these great and per- 
plexing topics of human interest. It is not to be 
expected that they will agree with one another; 
perhaps they will not even, in successive articles, 
agree with themselves. Does the Atlantic print 
a clever woman's criticism of that useful insti- 
tution the Kindergarten, straightway there ar- 
rive protesting letters from more Kindergart- 

[31 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

ners than it innocently supposed the whole 
world could contain. When it allowed a dis- 
tinguished college president to make a casual 
remark about the unchanging curriculum of 
Jesuit schools, there came a furious chorus from 
various Jesuit contemporaries (some of them, 
it is true, winking cordially, meanwhile, as if to 
remind one of the Pickwickian flavor of the con- 
troversy!) : "Why is your contemptible publi- 
cation Anti-Catholic?" Alas! only a few months 
before,when Mr. H. D. Sedgwick had given just 
praise to the Roman Church in certain matters, 
there was a similar chorus from many Protest- 
ant contemporaries, who announced their vo- 
ciferant grief that the Atlantic had gone over to 
Rome. Then it had been the turn of the Cath- 
olic letter-writers to pose as Lifelong Readers. 
But, queerly enough, a few months later still, 
when Mr. Sedgwick made an Italian journey, 
and described a station-master who had unques- 
tionably had a bad dinner, and who was low in 
his mind and spoke pessimistically of the Pope, 
behold these same Lifelong Readers terminat- 
ing their subscriptions, and writing mournfully 
that they could not longer support such a bit- 
terly sectarian publication as the Atlantic. 

[32] 



The Cheerless Reader 

A more recent example of the uneven dis- 
tribution of a sense of humor among Atlantic 
readers was the commotion caused by Mr. Eu- 
gene Wood's paper on Mrs. Eddy's literary 
style. Pathetic as it may seem to announce the 
fact now, this article was supposed to be humor- 
ous ; its examination of some of the foibles of 
the Foundress was to be interpreted in the spirit 
of Stevenson's smiling paper on "John Knox 
and his Relations to Women." But alas! the 
able-bodied letter-writers of the Christian Sci- 
entist faith did not seem to know their Steven- 
son; and to all Earnest Persons in that curious 
organization the Atlantic expresses its regret 
that any of Mr. Wood's sallies should have 
given pain. 

It is probable, however, that sectarians, sec- 
tionalists, and partisans of every hue will con- 
tinue to peruse their Atlantic with sorrow, or at 
least sufficient sorrow for epistolary purposes. 
One's own hobby horse gets roughly shouldered 
to one side, on the broad highway of the world. 
Where opinions are unfettered and allowed 
frank expression, some truths will be uttered 
more wholesome than flattering to one's pri- 
vate views. John Doe may like the Atlantic,— 

i33l 



Park-Street Papers 

Heaven bless him 1 — but if he prefer to write 
his name, like a story title, John Doe, Prohibi- 
tionist, or John Doe, Baptist or Anabaptist, 
Vivisectionist or Anti-Vivisectionist, Suffragist 
or Anti-Suifragist, he will often discover that 
the wrong magazine has been sent to his address. 
If people insist upon regarding themselves pri- 
marily, not as human beings, but as members of 
some organization ending with ist or er or an^ 
then the weekly or monthly organ of their par- 
ticular faction will furnish them with far more 
congenial reading than the Atlantic. The Gentle 
Reader, declares Dr. Crothers in the essay al- 
ready mentioned, is the reader who "has no 
ulterior aims." Precisely. If your chief purpose 
in taking a magazine is to find arguments for 
your favorite " cause," you are in a parlous state. 
You are in danger of evolving from a merely 
Earnest Person into a Cheerless Person. 

The Comic Spirit has whips for such. Not 
all of them are punished as neatly as that Ear- 
nest Southerner who complained of a " color- 
line" story in the Atlantic, " Why can't you 
Northerners be decent? " only to learn that the 
author of the story was a native of his own 
county ; or that Laudator Temporis Acti who 

[34] 



The Cheerless Reader 

lately found fault with the "silly, ignorant 
twaddle " of a certain article in the Contribu- 
tors' Clubj which, he averred, would never have 
been printed in the good old days of Mr. Al- 
drich or Mr. Howells — and which, as the 
Comic Spirit would have it, was actually writ- 
ten by the faultless pen of Mr. Aldrich him- 
self! 

To have no " ulterior aims " ! That is a coun- 
sel of perfection for reader and editor alike, and 
the Atlantic confesses that it would like to be 
thought to have no ulterior aims, except the 
pleasure and profit of its subscribers. Not one 
of its genuine Lifelong Readers will accuse it 
of dilettanteism, of treating the vital topics of 
the day with indifference. James Russell Low- 
ell, who, in the words of Mr. Scudder's recent 
Life, "gave the Atlantic a character it has ever 
since maintained,'* was no Gallio. But neither 
was he a Cheerless Person. It is true that from 
the day on which he assumed the editorship the 
magazine was held stanchly to certain tenets : 
as, for instance, to take but a single example, 
the belief that equality of political privileges in 
America should not be affected by considera- 
tions of race or religion. Yet it has given the 

i35:\ 



Park-Street Papers 

freedom of its pages to agood many writers who 
held quite the opposite view. It has been edited 
for men and women genuinely curious about 
aifairs, politics, literature, human society. It is 
not preoccupied with the claims of any particu- 
lar sect or party or philosophy. "Thought 
men" and "fact men," theorizers and workers, 
have alike addressed its readers, provided they 
had something magazinable to say, and could 
say it in an interesting fashion. To imagine that 
the contributors to such a magazine will always 
agree with the editor, or please all the readers, 
or indeed any reader in all his moods and opin- 
ions and convictions, is to hold a singularly 
parochial view of periodical literature. It is only 
your worthy rustic who wants nothing "in the 
paper" which he does not already believe. Un- 
less his political or religious opinions, derived 
largely from it, are constantly reflected in it, he 
will — as the saying used to be — - " stop the 
Tribune " ! 

The ideal magazine-reading mood — is it 
not? — is that of well-bred people listening to 
the after-dinner conversation in public which 
has happily succeeded after-dinner "oratory." 
No matter how varied and attractive the pro- 

[36] 



The Cheerless Reader 

gramme of addresses may be, no guest will be 
thrilled by every speaker. You are perhaps 
fortunate if you are thrilled at all ! But if the 
speeches are tolerably short, and represent a 
wide range of opinion, and are cleverly phrased, 
one may be expected to listen without making 
oneself conspicuous by either protest or ap- 
plause. No man, perhaps, makes precisely the 
speech you would like to hear. He may hurt 
somebody's feelings, — possibly your own. 
This may be inevitable, or merely the result of 
inadvertency ; or it may be the fault of the 
Toastmaster, who ought to have warned the 
speaker that So-and-Sowas at the banquet, and 
that certain things had better be left unsaid. A 
quicker-witted Toastmaster, for example, might 
have nudged Mr. Eugene Wood under the 
table, by way of friendly warning that the exact 
number of Mrs. Eddy's marriages was a vex- 
atious theme to certain persons who had pur- 
chased dinner-tickets, and that in any case it had 
nothing to do (save as bearing upon that lady's 
ripeness of experience) with the subject of her 
literary style. 

For the magazine means to spread each 
month a hospitable board, and to draw around 

[37] 



Park-Street Papers 

it many men of many minds. Mr. Roosevelt 
and Mr. Washington have both sat there, and 
we hope that both men will honor the Atlantic 
many times again, by contributing their quota 
to its wit and wisdom. People who do not like 
good company, who prefer to dine exclusively 
with Cheerless Persons of Their Own Sort, are 
not under the slightest obligation to attend. 
Our " mahogany tree " has to be made longer, 
month by month, to accommodate the new 
guests that wish to mingle with the old. To add 
more leaves to such an infinitely extensible 
dining-table is, of course, a pleasure. Yet it will 
do no harm to sit closer, too, with an amiable 
disposition to be pleased, if possible, with one's 
fellow guests, and to make all needful allowance 
for a most falHble Toastmaster. 



^^A Readable Proposition 



55 



Once more the Toastmaster rises to his feet, 
to offer greetings to the guests of the Atlantic. 
The table has become a long one, and the faces 
turned momentarily toward the Toastmaster 
are mainly those of Cheerful Readers. If any are 
secretly bored or rebellious at the bill of fare, 
they seem, at this kindly instant, gracious 
enough not to betray it. Most of them, as the 
Toastmaster fancies, — for he is not sufficiently 
keen-sighted to see to the end of such a table, 
and makes many a mistake in consequence ! — 
exhibit a tolerant willingness to be either edi- 
fied or amused. And, indeed, both edification 
and amusement await them, the Toastmaster 
believes, as soon as his own little speech is over. 
He chooses his text from one of those plain- 
spoken letters which evince the interest taken 
in the Atlantic by persons who have parted with 
their four dollars a year, and who keep, as they 

[39] 



Park-Street Papers 

should, a sharp eye upon their investment. The 
letter is from a Wyoming sheep-herder, and 
here is one of its most pleasing sentences : " I 
would like you to know that you have one sub- 
scriber who has no kick coming, and who thinks 
the Atlantic is a readable proposition all right." 
May the clear Wyoming sky long smile upon 
this solitary sheep-herder! May his flocks in- 
crease, and his vocabulary remain unspoiled! 
He has a discriminating taste. Oris it merely 
the liberal Western air which prompts him to 
utter what many other subscribers silently be- 
lieve? After all, one can never tell who is going 
to like the gallant old magazine. The Toast- 
master finds himself scrutinizing, with perhaps 
too frank an admiration, the persons who have 
the excellent habit of reading the Atlantic in 
hotels and trains and electric cars. A pretty 
girl never seems so pretty, to him, as when she 
is carrying that bit of dull orange color ; and the 
most prosaic middle-aged searcher after truth 
never appears in such imminent prospect of a 
radiant discovery as when cutting the Atlantic's 
uncut leaves. He remembers sitting once in an 
overland train as it coasted down the slope of 
the Sierras through the Bret Harte country. 

[40] 



"A Readable Proposition" 

He was thinking of those brilliant early stories 
of Harte's which the Atlantic published, and 
was watching gloomily, all the while, a certain 
bishop who was reading the " Smart Set." The 
train pulled up at a little station, and a muddy- 
trousered miner, looking for all the world like 
Kentuck, entered the car, stumbled past the 
comfortably extended legs of the bishop, and 
seating himself at the magazine table, promptly 
selected the Atlantic Monthly. The Toastmas- 
ter grew cheerful at once. He began to think 
of cogent reasons why the good bishop should 
prefer the " Smart Set," and nothing could 
have persuaded him that the miner was not a 
Superior Person. 

The odd thing is that it is impossible to guess 
where these Superior Persons are to be found. 
It is an illuminating experience to examine the 
Atlantic's subscription list in some city or town 
which happens to be well known to the investi- 
gator. To subscribe to this magazine is appar- 
ently no longer — as it was once said to be in 
certain newly settled communities — a sufficient 
evidence of one's social standing. Many of the 
Best People who would be expected to take it 
evidently belong in the class who vaguely "see 

[41 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

all the magazines at the Club** ; while the Su- 
perior Persons who actually pay the four dol- 
lars are often to be found in the side streets and 
hall-bedrooms and lonely farmhouses. Other 
magazines, it is believed, have had the same ex- 
perience in endeavoring to discover the exact 
habitat of the reading class. It is such readers, 
in truth, who form our only real reading class 
in this country. If the Atlantic continues to in- 
terest them, year after year, it is not because 
the magazine is a badge of respectability, but 
simply because it is found to be "a readable 
proposition." 

The dictionaries give the bare outline of that 
finely American term, " proposition," but they 
do not even hint at the warmth and coloring 
given to it on the lips of living men. What a 
wholesome, venturesome, tempting American- 
ism it is! It savors of something coming even 
if not yet arrived; of something alive and not 
yet dead and done with. It suggests, indeed, un- 
listed stocks and extra-hazardous enterprises, 
rather than the commonplace security of a three 
per cent government bond. Such a bond is well 
enough in its way, of course, but what is its ap- 
peal to the imagination, after all, when com- 

[4^] 



"A Readable Proposition" 

pared with a " proposition " ? The spirit of all 
the beckoning future is in that word, and yet 
with how deft a compliment does our Wyoming 
friend apply it to the magazine, as if he had re- 
alized upon his investment, and the potential 
pleasure offered by his subscription were already 
a known quantity ! 

With what an instinct, likewise, does the gen- 
tleman fromWyoming select his inevitable word 
when he speaks of the Atlantic as a readable 
proposition ! " It is better to be dumb than not 
to be understood," said the lively Giraldus Cam- 
brensis, who was a born magazinist, although 
of the twelfth century. When a magazine fails 
to be readable, it is as if a man failed in honesty 
or a woman in goodness. Its character is gone. 
There are tons of respectable printed material 
which is under no necessity of being readable: 
such as Doctor's Dissertations, Presidential 
Messages, books written in the jargon of some 
special science, and journals devoted to some pet 
ist ox ism of the hour. Most unreadable of all 
is the matter written with a painful effort to be 
read by everybody. Witness the average His- 
torical Romance of the season! Not long ago 
the Toastm aster happened to overhear a wor- 

[43] 



Park-Street Papers 

thy nursemaid exchanging literary confidences 
with the cook, apropos of a historical novel 
which was then the best-selling book of the min- 
ute. " Sure it 's a fine book," testified Maggie 
heartily, and then added, as if puzzled by her 
own ineptitude, " but somehow I ain*t very far 
with it." Exactly. Neither was the Toastmas- 
ter very far with it. Between a book written to 
be sold by the hundred thousand and a book 
written to be put away in a drawer, like " Pride 
and Prejudice" and the first draft of " Waver- 
ley," it is tolerably easy to say which is the 
more likely to prove permanently readable. 

A good many readers, and not all of them 
nursemaids, either, have been complaining that 
the poetry published in American magazines is 
unreadable, too. Perhaps they ought to say 
"verse" instead of "poetry," for it is obvious 
that most poets nowadays are not working at 
their trade. Some of them are dead, others have 
gone into politics or play -wri ting ; but the si- 
lence of the majority can be accounted for only 
on the theory that the poets are out on a sympa- 
thetic strike. Who can blame them ? Poor pay, 
long hours, an apathetic public, and thousands 
of verse-writers ready to take the poets' places 

[44] 



"A Readable Proposition 



j> 



at any moment! The worst of it is that these 
very "scabs" — the word is used in its stern 
economic significance — are all bent upon pro- 
ducing " readable " verse. They not only con- 
tinue to rhyme 

youth 

morning 

truth 

warning 

as the Autocrat humorously complained in 
these pages long ago, but they insist upon tell- 
ing us all about their little emotions, with the 
tiresome particularity of a dull sportsman who 
persists in explaining just why he failed to bag 
that last bird. Their mind to them a kingdom 
is, and, as somebody has unkindly said of them, 
the smaller the mind the greater appears the 
kingdom. No wonder the public has grown 
callous to all this counting of the pulses and 
auscultation of the chest. The exploitation of 
insignificant personalities, bent upon securing 
publicity, makes verse as unreadable as the " so- 
ciety column " of a Sunday paper. No wonder 
that so many real poets continue to stay out on 
strike. But some day there will come along a 
modern hero in the guise of a strapping strike- 

[45] 



Park-Street Papers 

breaker of a poet, who would rather work at his 
job than not, who, forgetting himself, believes 
that the world is a big world and a brave one, 
and who sings about it because he must, and not 
because he wants to make readable "copy." He 
will get all the patronage away from the clever 
verse-writers, and then the poets will begin to 
slink back, one by one, to ask for their old places. 
In the meantime the Atlantic tries to keep a 
sharp and welcoming eye upon anything that 
looks like a broad-shouldered strike-breaker 
sauntering down Park Street. Often it is de- 
ceived and finds that the new personage is only 
one more of those talented verse-writers, but 
still it keeps on watching. 

What is it, after all, that makes a magazine 
readable ? Must we not fall back upon the well- 
tested phrase, and say that "human interest'* 
is the one essential quality ? But the human in- 
terest must be real, and not assumed for reve- 
nue only. Two of the most uniformly reada- 
ble newspapers in this country are the New 
York" Sun " and the " Springfield Republican." 
Neither can be read without wrath, or given up 
without a feeling that the world has grown 
duller. Both are vigorous, alert, and well writ- 

[46] 



"A Readable Proposition" 

ten. They differ in their attitude toward most 
public questions ; they differ in field, one being 
" metropolitan " and the other " provincial/' — 
though which is the more truly provincial who 
is bold enough to say? — and there is a differ- 
ence in personal style which may be detected 
in almost every sentence. Yet both, from the 
first line to the last, quicken one's curiosity, in- 
terest, knowledge, about human life. They 
manage to convey to the most indifferent reader 
a vivid sense of what people are thinking about, 
what they feel and really are. 

It is this quality, — is it not? — which, mak- 
ing due allowance for differences in range, per- 
spective, and literary method, should also char- 
acterize a monthly magazine. The Atlantic has 
many competitors. The more the better. Each 
of them fulfills some public service peculiar to 
itself, — even if it be only to serve as an "awful 
example." Each of them reaches many per- 
sons whom the Atlantic cannot reach without 
changing its character and aim. The colored il- 
lustrations of one, the unimpeachable innocu- 
ousness of another, the agility of a third in 
jumping to the majority side of every question, 
do not arouse the Atlantic's envy. It would 

[47] 



Park-Street Papers 

like, indeed, to give its contributors a still am- 
pler audience, because it believes that all of 
them have something to say which is worth lis- 
tening to. But these opinions of its contribu- 
tors are their own, — as the Toastmaster has 
pointed out more than once in his annual re- 
marks, — and are not to be identified with 
whatever personal opinions may be held by the 
Atlantic's editors or publishers. Sydney Smith 
claimed that there were persons who would 
speak disrespectfully of the equator; and some 
writers for the Atlantic have been known to ap- 
proach with a freedom bordering upon levity 
such topics as Emerson, the Kindergarten, the 
New England Hill Town, Sir Walter Scott, 
the Philippine Commission, Lincoln's Vocab- 
ulary, the Tariff, and Mr. Henry James. This 
list might even be extended. There are, alas, 
live wires attached to all live subjects as well as 
to some subjects that seem tolerably dead. The 
Atlantic has no Index of forbidden themes, and 
wishes all its writers to say what they think, sub- 
ject to the general rules of after-dinner courtesy. 
But it does smile occasionally over this identifi- 
cation of supposed editorial opinion with the 
signed opinions of responsible contributors. If 

[48] 



"A Readable Proposition" 

an article appears in the Atlantic, it is because the 
contribution seems, in the fallible judgment of 
the Caterer, worth putting upon the table. If 
the boarders do not like it, the blame must be 
placed where it belongs. Probably the fault lies 
with the Caterer, but it is barely possible that it 
may lie, at times, with some prenatal or premil- 
lennial prejudices of the boarders themselves. 

Our "readable proposition," then, is the dis- 
cussion from month to month, by many men 
of many minds, of that American life which 
intimately affects the destiny of us all. If one 
wishes to study that life upon its external as- 
pects, the advertising pages of any prosperous 
magazine give a bewilderingly rich impression 
of our material progress. There is scarcely a 
single physical activity or luxury, from drawing 
one's cold tub in the morning to setting the 
burglar alarm at night, which is not pictured 
and glorified upon these electrotyped pages. 
But something in us keeps obstinately ask- 
ing:— 

"And afterwards, what else?" 

For it makes little difference whether a man 
speeds in his new automobile over the new 
macadam to his new countrv house, — man and 

[49]' 



Park-Street Papers 

machine and road and house exactly like the 
advertisements! — or climbs wearily up to the 
hall-bedroom again at the end of a day's work, 
to console himself with a pipe and a book. Each 
man must sit down at last with his old self; 
with the old hopes, sorrows, dreams ; with the 
old will to "win out" somehow; with that inner 
world, in short, which Literature interprets, and 
no hint of which appears in the advertising 
pages. A true mirror of life is what a literary 
magazine aspires to be. But it ought to reflect 
something deeper than the patented, nickel- 
plated conveniences and triumphs of a material 
civilization. It should also serve as a mirror for 
the ardors and loyalties, the patriotism and the 
growing world-consciousness of the American 
people. 

Any writer mistakes our people who does not 
recognize their fundamental idealism. Some of 
us inherit it from Puritan ancestors who were 
such idealists, it is said, that they had to hold 
on hard to the huckleberry bushes to keep from 
being translated. Others of us have brought 
hither a no less fine idealism, though it be the 
product of an alien faith and an alien soil. But 
it is everywhere in evidence, setting up popular 

[so] 



"A Readable Proposition" 

idols and pulling them down, blundering here 
and righting a blunder there, questioning our 
present social and economic machinery, em- 
phasizing party lines when they stand for some- 
thing real, smashing them when trickery grows 
too apparent, and building everywhere with 
restless energy a new America out of materials 
that have never had time to grow old. Inn- 
keepers abroad and advertising panels at home 
unite in the declaration that "Americans want 
the best." It is a good symptom, and it has a 
lesson for the magazinist. Those periodicals 
which are obtaining the widest reading are those 
which present the most various, hopeful, and 
full-blooded pictures of the men and the vital 
forces that are daily creating for us a new world. 
Never were our life and the life of the globe so 
interesting. The magazine desires long to re- 
main "a readable proposition." It surely will, 
if it continues in its own way to reflect and in- 
terpret, as all literature somehow succeeds in 
reflecting and interpreting, the fascination of 
life itself. 



Turning the Old Leaves 

There is too much said at New Year's — 
in the Toastmaster's opinion — about turning 
over a new leaf. Are the old leaves all so badly- 
written that one must hasten to forget them ? 
Is the blank whiteness of the untouched page 
more pleasant to the eye or more fortifying to 
the will than those closely written, underlined, 
untidy, but familiar pages which make up the 
story of one's life ? These pages of experience 
turn so easily in the hand ! They open by them- 
selves to so many passages worth remembering. 
Will the trim virgin pages of the New Year 
yield anything really more desirable? Doubt- 
less there may be finer bread than is made of 
wheat, and a nobler fish than the salmon, and 
a better book than " Henry Esmond," but we 
shall be lucky if we find them during the next 
twelve months. 

No, this annual counsel to turn over a new 

[52] 



Turning the Old Leaves 

leaf is but a restless, dissatisfied injunction. 
One's old habits may not have been such bad 
habits, after all. Does the handwriting always 
improve with age and practice ? Some of the old 
habits may be deemed actually good, even by 
the sharpest-visaged conscience that ever went 
peering about, Hke a meticulous housekeeper, 
on New Year's morning. And even if the old 
ways, hopes, and day's works were not all of 
the very first quality, the Toastmaster protests 
against that unmindful virtue that would turn 
them all outdoors at the end of December, to 
make room for the guests of the New Year. 
The new guests come, indeed, but the house 
seems empty. 

Have any of the Atlantic's readers, in the 
course of one of those changes of residence so 
typical of our migratory race and epoch, ever 
sat perplexed before a packing-box, hesitating 
whether to keep or throw away a bundle of old 
cheque-books? Hesitation is dangerous. If 
you once begin to turn over the stubs of those 
cheques long since drawn and cashed, the mo- 
ments slip by unheeded. What an odd sum- 
mary of experience is chronicled in those names 
and dates and figures ! They are abstracts of 

[53 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

duties and pleasures that had slipped quite 
down between the cracks of memory, yet here 
they are as fresh as yesterday*s. Here are the 
butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, 
with faces no longer blurred, for you, by dozens 
of their successors. You smile at this stub, and 
the next you turn hastily over ; you find your- 
self angry still at the record of some ancient ex- 
tortion on the part of plumber or tax-gatherer; 
you look ruefully at the figures representing 
some unwonted extravagance or folly ; or you 
catch yourself in the act of pious approbation 
of some forgotten benevolence. That cheque, 
at least, ought to have been larger ! A curious 
sense of reality takes possession of you, as you 
scan these laconic entries. They recall so much. 
The half-filled packing-box, the littered room, 
the confused misery of migration, all shift into 
dream-land ; while you, through the magic 
wrought by a few dusty, outlawed slips of paper, 
seem to feel the touch of Life's very garment, 
— it is all so real ! A great historian once 
sneered at that method of historical research 
which scrutinizes medireval wash-lists in the 
hope of learning something about mediaeval 
men and women. If he hadever looked over his 

[54] 



Turning the Old Leaves 

own old cheque-books, he would have spared 
the sneer. 

Some such Intimate contact with the spirit of 
this magazine has the Toastmaster recently ex- 
perienced, in turning the leaves of the earliest 
numbers. Those were cheque-books Indeed ! 
What rich accounts of wit, of poetry, and of 
scholarship to draw upon, and how liberal were 
the drafts ! And the readers of that day, eager 
for intellectual pleasures, for new information, 
for moral stimulus, indorsed so promptly the 
cheques drawn by the contributors ! To each 
subscriber there must have come the excited 
consciousness of a largesse up to the very limit 
of his capacity for enjoyment. There were dull 
contributions now and then, and doubtless there 
was an unappreciative reader here and there, but 
if the subscriber of fifty years ago did not, in the 
course of a twelve-month, have his money's 
worth of pleasure, it was not the fault of Dr. 
Holmes and Professor Lowell and the other 
capitalists of wit and learning. These Auto- 
crats, BIglows, and other Olympians drew the 
cheques lavishly, and the Atlantic subscribers 
might cash them if they wished. 

It is all recorded in those bound volumes 

[55] 



Park-Street Papers 

that stand upon the library shelves of so many of 
the older generation of Atlantic readers. There 
are the names and dates and subjects. Some of 
them are still vital, still a part of our national 
literature. Yet a large proportion of the pages 
in those files must necessarily seem of outworn 
value unless they are viewed as stubs in an old 
cheque-book. So read by the curious or pious, 
how full of significance they become for the in- 
terpretation of the last half-century of American 
letters and American history ! The fading, out- 
lawed leaves are once more coin of the realm of 
thought. Behind the dusty volumes rise troops 
of eager readers, — applauding, questioning, 
combative, — precisely like the subscribers of 
to-day. For that matter, the Atlantic is im- 
mensely proud that a long roll of names, first 
inscribed in 1 857, are still upon its subscription 
lists. When two or three of this old guard take 
pains to write and say that a current article is 
good, the Toastmaster believes them. Only the 
other day one of these valiant souls wrote that 
she hadjust finished reading every volume from 
the beginning, except for a period of two years, 
when the magazine was unaccountably dull! 
The Toastmaster, who has the curiosity but not 

[56] 



Turning the Old Leaves 

the courage to ask the date of those two lean 
years, congratulates his correspondent upon 
possessing the alchemy of an imagination which 
brings the old days back and still hears the old 
voices speaking with undiminished charm. 

To most of uSj lacking as we do that evoking 
Imagination, the secret of literary vitality seems 
baffling, incommunicable. Why should it be 
that one poem or story, printed for good "jour- 
nalistic" reasons in 1857, should be recognized 
a half-century later as " literature," while its 
companion pieces have utterly vanished from 
memory? We have our private guesses, of 
course, and our triumphant public demonstra- 
tions of the presence of this or that antiseptic 
quality in the piece in question. But the expla- 
nations do not wholly explain. It is only the 
listening imagination that can divine the mys- 
tery, and distinguish the immortal from the 
transient voices. 

In one sense, indeed, the changes wrought 
by the last half-century are apparent to the most 
careless eye that glances over those bound vol- 
umes of which we have been speaking. Since 
that panic year of 1857 — darkened by financial 
disaster and by the ever-nearing conflict over 

[57] 



Park-Street Papers 

slavery — what political, social, and commercial 
developments have altered the material aspect 
of the United States ! The magazine writers 
who have striven to interpret these changes 
have been dealing with a shifting world. It is 
like photographing from a raft the waves of the 
sea. The writers themselves have often altered 
their conviction s and purpose ; they have gained 
or lost in talent or inspiration. Unknown to 
themselves, the magazine-reading public has 
reassessed them, decade after decade, at a lower, 
or perhaps at a higher figure. That public itself 
is constantly dropping away, and is as con- 
stantly renewed. It is necessarily fickle in its 
attachments, given to swift enthusiasms and 
long forgetfulness. "Who was that young fel- 
low who went up and came down again like a 
rocket ? " asked Frank Stockton of the Toast- 
master, a year or two after "The Red Badge of 
Courage " had been published ; " was it William 
Crane? " "Stephen," corrected the Toastmaster. 
There was a whimsical smile upon Stockton's 
dark, gentle, tired face, as if he meant to hint 
that all our little rockets will comedown in time. 
And no doubt most of them do. There are al- 
ready persons who ask "who was Frank Stock- 

[58] 



Turning the Old Leaves 

ton?" and the Toastmaster remembers dining 
at an American table with an accomplished and 
cultivated company, not one of whom, as it 
turned out, had ever read "Vanity Fair." 

Amid all this impermanence, it is no wonder 
that even a casual scrutiny of the Atlantic files 
should reveal editorial inconsistencies and par- 
tialities of vision. Here is the dusty record of 
unskillful literary prophecies, of Presidential 
"booms" that came to nothing, of social tend- 
encies that sloped, as it proved, in unsuspected 
directions, and of Utopian rearrangements that 
still await the fit hour and the man. Some of 
the intrenched political and social abuses against 
which the Atlantic's writers have turned their 
heaviest guns seem as stoutly intrenched as 
ever, and likely to afford splendid shooting for 
another half-century. Many of the "big" arti- 
cles which were expected to batter down these 
forts of folly are now recognized by the very 
office-boys as ill-aimed or premature. The best 
editorial devices for winning and holding read- 
ers often seem, in the retrospect, so illogical 
and naive ! Tramping through the Belgian Di- 
nant one rainy evening last summer, the Toast- 
master halted in admiration before the tent of 



Park-Street Papers 

some strolling French players, who were win- 
ning a harvest at a peasants' fair. The buxom 
mother of the family, perched, short-skirted 
and merry-eyed, upon a platform in front of 
the tent, harangued her audience of Ardennes 
peasants upon the merits of the representation 
that was about to be given. The oldest boy 
blew painfully at a bugle, while a younger boy 
— between bites of an apple — rang a brass bell. 
The half-grown daughter shook a tambourine 
coquettishly under the noses of the village 
youth. The father sold the admission tickets. 
And what was the programme that was pack- 
ing the tent with honest Ardennes folk, at fif- 
teen, thirty, and fifty centimes a head, according 
to location ? 

I. Scenes from the Life of Moses 

In Seven I'ableaux 

Beginning with the Bulrushes 

II. The Sioux's Revenge 
A Drama of Blood 

III. The Sights of Paris 
In I'welve I'ableaux 

[60] 



Turning the Old Leaves 

In fact, the tent was already full, and the 
Toastmaster reluctantly turned up his coat- 
collar against the rain, and marched on. But 
what editorial instinct was revealed in that va- 
ried catalogue of dramatic delights ! Many a 
time has the Toastmaster turned the leaves of 
certain back numbers of the Atlantic, especially 
remembered for their success or failure with 
the public, and tried to analyze the causes of 
their popularity or their neglect. Yet it may 
have been time wasted. Could the Ardennes 
people have told whether it was Moses, the Red 
Indian, or the Boulevard — or the combination 
of the three — that lured their centimes from 
their pockets ? Neither can the present-day 
critic infallibly decide whether it was too many 
— or not enough — Bulrushes, too much or too 
little of the Sioux's Revenge, which made or 
marred the fortunes of those well-remembered 
issues of the Atlantic Monthly. 

The one thing certain, among these accidents 
of short-lived glory and short-lived disap- 
pointment, these shiftings of scene and subject, 
and tactics altered from decade to decade, is 
that after all there is something in the Atlantic 
which does not change. From the beginning, 
[6i] 



Park-Street Papers 

certain men have expressed in it unwaver- 
ing ideals, an abiding vision of a better United 
States of America. Some of these writers hap- 
pily survive. Others, later-born, have instinct- 
ively aligned themselves with them. No one 
who lingers over the rows of bound volumes 
can fail to perceive, beneath the altering fash- 
ions of speech, an Atlantic " body of doctrine," 
— an interpretation, at once sound and fine, 
of our American civilization. To this persistent 
faith in the things that are excellent is due the 
measure of permanence which the magazine has 
won. "They pounded and we pounded," ex- 
plained the simple-hearted Duke after Water- 
loo, " but we pounded longest." 



The Centenary of 
Hawthorne 



The Centenary of 
Hawthorne' 



In watching a performance of Shakespeare's 
most famous play, the attention of the specta- 
tor is arrested by one essentially solitary figure. 
Surrounded by the personages of a barbaric 
court, who eye him with curiosity, respect, or 
secret apprehension, stands a grave young man 
garbed in black. His bearing is princely. Hebe- 
gins to speak; but he veils deep ironic parables 
in a tone of perfect deference and courtesy. In 
vain do the king and queen utter their resonant 
commonplaces, and cast troubled glances at each 
other. They cannot sound him. How much does 
the prince know? What does he think? What 
will he do? He is inscrutable. 

As the play runs its course, certain traits of 

' An address delivered at Bowdoin College in commemo- 
ration of the one hundredth anniversary of Hawthorne's birth. 



Park-Street Papers 

Hamlet become clear enough. He is of melan- 
choly disposition, and of an intellectual cast of 
mind. He has "the courtier's, scholar's, sol- 
dier's, eye, tongue, sword." He has won the 
friendship of a man and the love of a woman. 
He possesses an exquisite humor,and delights in 
talk. He is reverent ; believing in the powers of 
good, and fearing the powers of evil. He has a 
restless intelligence which probes into the secret 
places of human life. He broods over man's 
mortality, and plays with it imaginatively. He 
has infirmities of will, yet there is in him some- 
thing dangerous, which on occasion sweeps all 
before him. For the space of some three hours 
we can observe this creation of Shakespeare 
play his part, — listening, planning, conversing, 
avenging, dying. Yet no one has ever plucked 
out the heart of his mystery. No actor or critic 
or lonely reader has ever been able to pronounce 
to us, indubitably and without fear of contradic- 
tion, what manner of man this Hamlet reallyis. 
In the best-known and best-loved circle of 
our American writers there is likewise one figure 
who stands in a sort of involuntary isolation. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne had, indeed, warm and 
faithful friends. His affectionate family have 
[66] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

loved to dwell upon the details of his domestic 
life. He moved as an equal among a few of the 
best spirits of his time. The impression he made 
upon them may be traced in the journals of 
Longfellow and Emerson, the letters of Brown- 
ing and Story and Lowell, the recollections of 
Bridge and Fields. His writings have been ana- 
lyzed by accomplished critics. He was himself 
a diarist of extraordinary minuteness and pre- 
cision, and, thanks to his own descriptions, we 
can still see him sitting with the tavern-haunters 
of North Adams, with the " defiant Democrats " 
in the Salem Custom House, with the blame- 
less sea-captains in Mrs. Biodgett's boarding- 
house in Liverpool ; we can stand by his side 
in the art-galleries of Florence and the studios 
of Rome. He died but forty years ago, and many 
living men and women remember him with 
strange vividness. Yet he remains, after all, a 
man apart. Mystery gathers about him, even 
while the annalists and the critics are striving 
to make his portrait clear. 

Certain characteristics of Hawthorne are of 
course indisputable, and it is not fantastic to add 
that some of these qualities bear a curious re- 
semblance to those of that very Prince of Den- 

[67] 



Park-Street Papers 

mark who seems more real to us than do most 
living men. Hawthorne was a gentleman; in 
body the mould of form, and graced with a noble 
mind. Like Hamlet, he loved to discourse with 
unlettered people, with wandering artists, with 
local humorists, although without ever losing 
his own dignity and inviolabl® reserve. He had 
irony for the pretentious, kindness for the sim- 
ple-hearted, merciless ^vit for the fools. He liked 
to speculate about men and women, about temp- 
tation and sin and punishment; but he remained, 
like Hamlet, clear-sighted enough to distin- 
guish between the thing in itself and the thing 
as it appeared to him in his solitude and melan- 
choly. His closest friends, Hke Horatio Bridge 
and W. D. Ticknor, were men of marked justice 
and sanity of mind, — of the true Horatio type. 
Hawthorne was capable, if need be, of passion- 
ate and swift action, for all his gentleness and ex- 
quisite courtesy of demeanor. Toward the last 
he had, like Hamlet, his forebodings, — "such 
a kind of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble 
awoman"; and he died, like Hamlet, in silence, 
conscious of an unfinished task. 

We celebrate, in this summer time, the cen- 
tenary of Hawthorne's birth. It is possible to 
[68] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

understand him, in relation to his generation, 
better than he was understood in the middle of 
the nineteenth century, though we can scarcely 
praise him more generously than did those few 
contemporaries who, like Poe, made adequate 
recognition of his genius. If we cannot penetrate 
to the heart of his mystery, we can nevertheless 
perceive the nature of it. Critics will long con- 
tinue to assess the precise value of his contribu- 
tions to literature, and to assign his place in the de- 
velopment of his chosen art of romance-writing. 
But we who are gathered in his honor at the col- 
lege of his choice may leave to the specialists the 
discussion of this and that detail of his crafts- 
manship. In a world where literary values, and 
the very basis of literary judgments, shift as they 
seem to be shifting in our contemporary civil- 
ization, it is impossible to predict what Haw- 
thorne's popular rankwill be in another hundred 
years. But we can at least say why two genera- 
tions of Americans have respected Hawthorne's 
character and admired his writings. We can draw 
once more in memory the outward features of 
the man, and, before they fade again into the 
shadow, may assert our own faith in the endur- 
ing significance of his work. 

[69 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

No glimpse of Hawthorne, at any period of 
his career, is without charm ; yet a peculiar fas- 
cination attaches to those pictures of the hand- 
some, brooding, impenetrable boy which have 
been sketched, in lines all too few, by his college 
classmates. Here in a rustic school of learning, 
on the edge of the wilderness, our student found 
his Wittenberg. His contact with books had 
been that of the well-bred New England lad of 
a day when books were still respected. He had 
had free choice among them, and had read, be- 
fore he was fourteen, Rousseau and the " New- 
gate Calendar," while the first book purchased 
with his own money was Spenser's "Faerie 
Queene."Butunder the Brunswick pines he was 
to find a better thing than books: namely, friend- 
ship. When Hawthorne matriculated in 1821, 
Bowdoin College had had but nineteen years of 
struggling life. There were a handful of profes- 
sors and slightly more than a hundred students. 
Yet the place already had character, and it some- 
how bred aspiration. It is a suggestive coinci- 
dence, that in sketching Bowdoin College under 
an assumed name in his first book, "Fanshawe," 
Hawthorne pictures his academic hero as mas- 
tered by the " dream of undying fame "; and that 

[70] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

fifty years later, when his classmate Longfellow 

described the college of his youth in the noble 

" Morituri Salutamus," it was in the words, — 

Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose 

Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose. 

To many of those dreaming youths, fame, of 
various degrees, became a reality. In Haw- 
thorne's class were Longfellow, Cheever, Ab- 
bott, and Cilley ; among his college mates were 
the highly honored names of Appleton, Bell, 
Fessenden, Pierce, Stowe, Prentiss, Hale. 
Among such ambitious companions, the shy 
young Hawthorne held quietly to his own path. 
He seems to have Hked the plain, country-bred 
lads better than the sons of wealth and social 
opportunity; he belonged to the more demo- 
cratic of the two literary societies. The scanty 
records of his undergraduate life tell us some- 
thing of him, although not much: he rooms in 
Maine Hall, he boards at Mrs. Dunning's, he 
is fined for card-playing, refuses to declaim, 
writes better Latin and English prose than the 
others, — but that is about all. One trait is, 
indeed, marked, and it is a wholesome one: 
namely, tenacity of friendship, — quite consist- 
ent with a certain cool, obstinate independence. 

[71 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

Nearly forty years after graduation Hawthorne 
dedicated a book, " Our Old Home," to his 
college friend FrankHn Pierce, who had become 
in 1863 extremely unpopular at the North. His 
publishers, with professional caution, advised 
Hawthorne not to ruin the chances of his book 
by dedicating it to the discredited ex- President. 
WhereuponHawthorne wrote to them,in words 
that should be dear to all who believe in the vi- 
tality of college attachments : — 

" I find that it would be a piece of poltroon- 
ery in me to withdraw either the dedication or 
the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate re- 
lations with Pierce render the dedication alto- 
gether proper, especially as regards this book, 
which would have had no existence without his 
kindness; and if he is so exceedingly unpopu- 
lar that his name is enough to sink the volume, 
there is so much the more need that an old friend 
should stand by him. I cannot, merely on ac- 
count of pecuniary profit or literary reputation, 
go back from what I have deliberately thought 
and felt it right to do ; and if I were to tear out 
the dedication, I should never look at the vol- 
ume again without remorse and shame." 

Although the young Hawthorne came no 

[72] _ 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

nearer winning academic distinction than Low- 
ell or Thackeray, his college career betrays 
everywhere this steady insistence upon what he 
dehberately thought and felt it right to do. He 
had his own inner life, and if Bowdoin did not 
impart to him all the manifold intellectual and 
spiritual culture which an old-world university 
in theory possesses, he found there freedom, 
health, and a few men to love. One at least of 
these friends perceived the genius which was la- 
tent in the dark-haired, keen-eyed, rosy-cheeked 
boy, so reticent, so obstinate, so loyal. The clair- 
voyant was his classmate Bridge. In the pre- 
face to the " Snow Image" Hawthorne wrote, 
in sentences that every Bowdoin man perhaps 
knows by heart, yet so winning in their senti- 
ment and phrase that they tempt quotation : — 
" If anybody is responsible for my being at 
this day an author, it is yourself. I know not 
whence your faith came ; but, while we were lads 
together at a country college, — gathering blue- 
berries, in study-hours, under those tall aca- 
demic vines ; or watching the great logs, as they 
tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; 
or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the 
woods; or bat-fowHng in the summer twilight; 

[73] 



Park-Street Papers 

or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream 
which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward 
through the forest, — though you and I will 
never cast a line in it again, — two idle lads, in 
short, doing a hundred things that the Faculty 
never heard of, or else it had been the worse 
for us, — still, it was your prognostic of your 
friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of 
fiction." 

But what sort of writer of fiction? Many 
elements contribute to the answer to that ques- 
tion. There are lines of literary inheritance to 
be reckoned with; influences of race and na- 
tionality and epoch play their part. But of all 
the factors that shaped Hawthorne's career as 
a writer, Salem inevitably comes first. Back to 
that weather-beaten, decrepit seaport Haw- 
thorne returned when the bright college days 
were over. The gray mist of the place settles 
about him and gathers within him, and for a 
dozen years one can scarcely tell whether he 
is man or spectre. All that is certain is that 
he is alone. His classmates fare forth eagerly 
into law, politics, business. But Hawthorne 
has no taste for any of the professions. He 
lingers on in Salem, sharing the scanty income 

[74] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

of his mother and sisters, reading desultory- 
books, taking long nocturnal and daytime ram- 
bles, brooding, dreaming, and trying to learn 
in his dismal chamber to write stories about 
human life. 

Many years later he penned this pathetic 
fragment of autobiography : — 

" For a long, long while I have been occa- 
sionally visited with a singular dream ; and I 
have an impression that I have dreamed it ever 
since I have been in England. It is, that I am 
still at college, — or, sometimes, even at school, 
— and there is a sense that I have been there 
unconscionably long, and have quite failed to 
make such progress as my contemporaries have 
done; and I seem to meet some of them with 
a feeling of shame and depression that broods 
over me as I think of it, even when awake. 
This dream, recurring all through these twenty 
or thirty years, must be one of the effects of 
that heavy seclusion in which I shut myself up 
after leaving college, when everybody moved 
onward and left me behind." 

Such tragedies, unrelieved by any later victo- 
ries of the spirit, are familiar enough to college 
men. As the roll is called at their reunions, 

[75] 



Park-Street Papers 

there will always be here and there a name, 
once rich in promise, of some man who has 
"gone to seed." The sojourn of Hawthorne 
in Salem is an old story now. Nothing new is 
to be added to the record of morbid physical 
isolation and of intellectual solitude. Set those 
twelye years oyer against the corresponding 
twelye in the life of Scott, Balzac, Dickens, 
TurgeniefF, and they have a ghostly pallor. 
True, Hawthorne's separation from the world 
preseryed him from those distractions which 
often dissipate the powers of the artist. He 
kept, as he said, the dew of his youth and the 
freshness of his heart. His unbroken leisure 
left him free to ponder upon a few permanent 
objects of meditation, and no one can say how 
much his romances may not haye gained thereby 
in depth of tone and concentration of inten- 
tion. 

Yet the plain fact remains that he hated his 
self-imposed prison, eyen while he lacked yigor 
to escape from it. " There is no fate in the 
world so horrible as to haye no share in either 
its joys or its sorrows " ; thus he writes in 1 837 
to Longfellow, who had already made a career 
and tasted deep of both sorrow and joy. And 

[76] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

Hawthorne's sombre seclusion was affecting 
his nascent art as well as his life. " I have an- 
other great difficulty," he adds to Longfellow, 
"in the lack of materials; for I have seen so 
little of the world that I have nothing but thin 
air to concoct my stories of." Strip the veil of 
romantic mystery from these Salem years, and 
they show their sinister significance. It was an 
abnormal, melancholy existence, which sapped 
Hawthorne's physical vitality and left its twi- 
light upon his soul and upon the beautiful 
pages of his books. 

The artistic record of that period is pre- 
served in "Twice-Told Tales," a collection of 
some twoscore stories, none of which, on their 
first publication, had been signed with the au- 
thor's name. Hawthorne said of them after- 
ward, — and it is the final word of criticism as 
well as a confession of his way of life while com- 
posing them, — "They have the pale tint of 
flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade." 

Nevertheless the flowers did blossom in spite 
of all. The soil would have been better had it 
been enriched and watered, yet it was Haw- 
thorne's native soil. For two hundred years his 
ancestors had trodden the Salem streets ; they 

[77] 



Park-Street Papers 

had gone to sea, had persecuted the witches, 
had whipped Quaker women, had helped to 
build a commonwealth. He had no particular 
pride in them or love for them, but he could 
not escape the bond of kinship. Toward the 
more hospitable and cultivated aspects of Salem 
society in his own day, — the Salem of the Pick- 
erings and Saltonstalls and Storys, — toward 
the dignity and beauty that still clothe the 
stately houses of Chestnut Street, Hawthorne 
remained indifferent. His imagination homed 
back to the superstition-burdened past, with 
its dark enthusiasms, its stern sense of law. 
Open the mouldering folio of Cotton Mather's 
" Magnalia " and you will discover the men and 
the scenes that haunted Hawthorne's mind as 
he sat in his dusky chamber writing tales. 

He practiced himself also, with unwearied 
patience, in reporting the trivial incidents of 
the life around him, until he had developed a 
descriptive style marked by exceptional phy- 
sical accuracy, and yet subtly suggestive, too. 
Listen to this lonely and as yet scarcely recog- 
nized man of letters, as he gives counsel in 
1843 to his friend Horatio Bridge, who had 
also taken his pen in hand: — 

[78 ] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

" Begin to write always before the impression 
of novelty has worn off from your mind, else 
you will be apt to think that the peculiarities 
which at first attracted you are not worth re- 
cording; yet these slight peculiarities are the 
very things that make the most vivid impres- 
sion upon the reader. Think nothing too tri- 
fling to set down, so it be in the smallest de- 
gree characteristic. You will be surprised to 
find on re-perusing your journal what an im- 
portance and graphic power these little particu- 
lars assume." 

This is the assured tone of the finished 
craftsman. And he is careful to add : " I would 
advise you not to stick too accurately to the 
bare fact, either in your descriptions or your 
narrative ; else your hand will be cramped and 
the result will be a want of freedom that will 
deprive you of a higher truth than that which 
you strive to attain." 

Pale blossoms, indeed, are many of these 
earlier stories, yet genius was stirring at their 
root, and their growth was guided by a hand 
that already distinguished between the lower 
truth of fact and the higher truth of imagina- 
tion. Sunshine was all that was needed, and 

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by and by, though tardily, the sunshine came. 
Hawthorne falls in love; he craves and finds 
contact with "the material world"; he goes to 
work in the Boston Custom House; he makes 
investment of money and cooperation at Brook 
Farm, where his handsome figure and quizzical 
smile seem almost substantial now, among the 
ghosts of once eager reformers that flit about 
that deserted hillside. He marries a charming 
woman, and lives with her in the Old Manse 
at Concord for four years of idyllic happiness. 
He publishes a new collection of tales, marked 
by originality of conception, a delicate sense of 
form, and deep moral significance. He goes 
picnicking with politicians, too, and gets ap- 
pointed surveyor of the port of Salem. He is 
doing a man*s work in the world now, and in 
spite of some humorous grumbling and the 
neglect of his true calling, takes a manly satis- 
faction in it. But partisan politics rarely did 
America a better service than in 1 849, when 
the Whig administration at Washington threw 
Hawthorne out of office. He soon steadied 
himself under the bitter blow, — writing to 
George S. Hillard, "I have come to feel that 
it is not good for me to be here. I am in a 

[80] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

lower moral state than I have been, — a duller 
intellectual one. So let me go ; and under God's 
providence, I shall arrive at something better." 
His admirable wife was — womanlike — more 
concrete. When he told her that he had been 
superseded, she exclaimed, " Oh, then you can 
write your book!" 

This book, as every one knows, was the 
*^ Scarlet Letter," that incomparable master- 
piece of American fiction, which has long since 
taken its place among the great literature of the 
world. The boyish dream of Fame, analyzed 
in so many exquisite parables during his weary 
years of waiting, had at last come true for him. 
He was too unworldly to value it over-much, 
but he took a quiet pleasure in his success, with- 
out losing his cool, detached attitude toward 
his own creations. " Some parts of the ' Scarlet 
Letter,' " he pronounces, "are powerfully writ- 
ten." His long apprenticeship in one of the 
most exacting fields of literary composition was 
over. He was forty-six; and he had but four- 
teen more years to live. The first two of these 
were the most rich in production, for they 
brought forth the " House of the Seven Ga- 
bles," that well-nigh faultless romance of Old 
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Park-Street Papers 

Salem ; the beautiful " Wonder-Book/' written 
in six weeks, with marvelous technical mastery 
of a difficult ^^;2r^ of literature ; and, finally, the 
shrewd, ironical, surprisingly novel handling 
of his Brook Farm material, the " Blithedale 
Romance/* 

When Hawthorne accepted the Liverpool 
consulship in 1853, he was already, what he 
has ever since remained, the foremost of our 
fiction writers. His extended sojourn abroad 
illuminated his mind in many ways, but it can 
scarcely be said to have contributed new ele- 
ments to his art. It brought him again into 
contact with executive duties, always scrupu- 
lously fulfilled ; with new types of men and 
new scenes ; and with a whole world of pictorial 
and plastic art, hitherto undreamed of. The 
record of it may be read in his laborious note- 
books and in one profoundly imaginative ro- 
mance. But Hawthorne's spiritual commerce 
with Europe came, on the whole, too late ; both 
in England and Italy he remained the observ- 
ant alien. One Hkes him none the less for a 
certain sturdy provinciality, — a touch even, 
here and there, of honest Philistinism. But one 
misses, in the records of these later years, the 

[82] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

spontaneity, the vigor, the penetration, which 
marked the more fragmentary "American Note- 
Books." The unseen springs of vitality in him 
were beginning to fail ; the shadows, dispersed 
by many a year of happiness, were beginning 
to close in once more. Longfellow notes in his 
diary, March i, i860: "A soft rain falling all 
day long, and all day long I read the ' Marble 
Faun/ A wonderful book; but with the old 
dull pain in it that runs through all of Haw- 
thorne's writings." 

It was in that year that the romancer re- 
turned home, and settled at the Wayside in 
Concord. War-time was nearing. Hawthorne, 
never an eager politician in any cause, was per- 
plexed about his country, gloomy about him- 
self. He wrote indeed, with his customary skill 
of surface composition, upon a new romance 
whose theme was the elixir of immortality. "I 
have a notion," he writes to Longfellow, "that 
the last book will be my best, and full of wis- 
dom about matters of life and death." But it 
was fitful, despairing work, without unity of 
architecture. He sketched it now under one 
title, now under another. At last he prepared 
the opening chapter for the Atlantic Monthly, 

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but in May, 1864, the unfinished manuscript 
rested upon his coffin. And so there passes 
from sight our New England Hamlet, with his 
grave beauty, his rich, mournful accents, his 
half-told wisdom about matters of life and 
death. 

Yet not in these events of his outward career, 
natural as it is to recall them now, but in the 
peculiar processes of his creative activity, shall 
we find, if at all, the secret of that power which 
gives Hawthorne his unique position in our lit- 
erature. First among those deep instincts which 
give unity to his character and his books, should 
be placed his choice of moral problems as ma- 
terial for his art. For nearly half a century we 
have witnessed painstaking endeavors to base 
the art of fiction upon the science of physiology. 
Men of massive talent have wrought at such 
books, but their experiments are already crum- 
bling. And we have had schools of fiction deal- 
ing with the mere intellect, registering the subtle 
influence of mind upon mind, and the open 
struggle of mind with mind, or playing with ex- 
traordinary cleverness upon the surface of mo- 
tives, while ignoring a whole world of profound 
emotions. But the greatest masters of English 

[84] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

fiction have never forgotten that man has a con- 
science. The novelist who ignores the moral and 
spiritual nature abandons the very field of fic- 
tion where the highest triumphs have been won. 
There is a word to describe this field, — a word 
broader than either "mind " or "conscience/* 
and inclusive both of mental processes and spir- 
itual perceptions. It is the word "heart." 

In the "Blithedale Romance," Westervelt, 
the embodiment of intellectual acuteness, is per- 
plexed and irritated to find that Zenobia has 
drowned herself. He cannot grasp her motive. 
" Her mind was active and various in its pow- 
ers," said he. " She had life's summer all before 
her, and a hundred varieties of brilliant success. 
How forcibly she might have wrought upon the 
world ! Every prize that could be worth a wo- 
man's having — and many prizes which other 
women are too timid to desire — lay within Ze- 
nobia's reach." Then, in a note that Hawthorne 
touches quietly, but unerringly. Miles Cover- 
dale answers : "In all this, there would have 
been nothing to satisfy her heart." Even the 
romance-writer, according to Hawthorne's own 
dictum, " sins unpardonably as far as he swerves 
aside from the truth of the human heart." 

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To interpret that truth was his artistic task. 
He was haunted by moral problems. The ex- 
traordinary fragment, " Ethan Brand," is an at- 
tempt to solve the problem of the development 
of the intellect at the expense of the soul. In 
" Rappaccini's Daughter" the father's love of 
scientific experiment overmasters his love for 
his child. In the "Christmas Banquet "we have 
a man who misses the secret that gives substance 
to a world of shadows. The" Scarlet Letter " is 
a study of the workings of conscience after a 
committed crime ; the " House of the Seven 
Gables " is devoted to the legacy of ancestral 
guilt and its mediation ; the " Marble Faun " 
to the influence of a sin upon the development 
of character. 

Why did Hawthorne's imagination fasten 
upon subjects like these? It is not enough to 
say that he wrote under the influence of Puri- 
tanism. Too much has been made, by his critics, 
of such phrases as " Puritan gloom " and " the 
morbid New England conscience." It is true 
that Hawthorne inherited from Puritan ances- 
tors a certain tenseness of fibre, a sensitiveness 
of conscience, a conviction of the reality of 
the moral life. It is also true that he was in- 
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The Centenary of Hawthorne 

tensely interested in Puritanism as an historic 
phenomenon. It gave him the material he 
needed. Howthoroughly he apprehended both 
the spirit and the outward form of life in early 
New England is evidenced by his " Legends of 
the Province House," "Goodman Brown," the 
"Gentle Boy," the "Minister's Black Veil." 
Yet neither his inheritance in Puritanism nor his 
profound study of it is enough to account satis- 
factorily for his choice of themes for his stories. 
Judged by his reading, by his friends and asso- 
ciations, by the spiritual emancipation which 
was already liberalizing New England when he 
began to write, he was Transcendentalist rather 
than Puritan. Puritan theology, as such, had no 
hold upon him personally; he was not even a 
church-goer. One can only say that he was 
drawn to moral problems by the natural gravi- 
tation of his own mind, just as Newman was 
inevitably attracted to theology, or Darwin to 
science. From the days of Job to the day of 
Ibsen and Maeterlinck there has been here and 
there a person able to find in the moral nature 
of man material for the creative imagination. 
Hawthorne was one of these persons ; he was 
nurtured by Puritanism but not created by it. 

[87] 



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A striking illustration of this habit of his 
mind is found in the introduction to his "Mosses 
from an Old Manse/* where he repeats a story 
of the Concord fight, which had been told to him 
by Lowell. On that famous April morning, a 
youth who had been chopping wood for the 
Concord minister was drawn by curiosity to the 
battlefield, the axe still in his hand. He en- 
countered a wounded British soldier, and in a 
nervous impulse of momentary terror dealt him 
a fatal blow. " The story," says Hawthorne, 
"comes home to me like truth. Oftentimes, as 
an intellectual and moral exercise,! have sought 
to follow that poor youth through his subse- 
quent career, and observe how his soul was 
tortured by the blood stain, contracted as it had 
been before the long custom of war had robbed 
human life of its sanctity, and while it still 
seemed murderous to slay a brother man. That 
one circumstance has borne more fruit for me 
than all that history tells us of the fight." Ob- 
serve that Hawthorne finds "an intellectual and 
moral exercise" in brooding over the question 
of the young man*s responsibihty. This may be 
called, if one pleases, the working of the morbid 
Puritan conscience. But it is also the very stuff 
[88 ] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

out of which Greek tragedy is woven. It is the 
same brooding that is back of "Othello" and 
" Macbeth." " England is not the world," says 
an old courtier in one of Schiller's plays. New 
England has no monoply of the conscience. 

The present generation has grown some- 
what impatient of all analysis of that tragic guilt 
which our weak humanity may so easily incur. 
No doubt it is no very cheerful occupation. The 
anatomist of the heart develops a professional 
instinct for morbid pathology ; he forsakes, per- 
haps too often, the normal organ for the ab- 
normal. In his search for motives, it is easy for 
him to fall into casuistry; to impute guilt where 
there is none ; to discover moral pitfalls where 
the ground is really smooth. It is with real satis- 
faction, with a positive glee, that Browning's 
monk in the "Spanish Cloister" cries, — 

'* There 's a great text in Galatians, 
Once you trip on it, entails 
Twenty-nine distinct damnations. 
One sure, if another fails." 

Solitude is a prolific breeder of fancies like these. 
Over the windows of the romancer's lonely 
study, as of the monk's cell, the cobwebs may 
gather till the whole sky seems darkened. But 

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Park-Street Papers 

there Is other darkness, too, terribly real. " I do 
not see any sin in the world," said Hawthorne's 
brilliant contemporary, George Sand, "but I 
see a great deal of ignorance." Not so with his 
profounder insight. The presence of evil in the 
human heart, palpable, like that gross darkness 
which could be touched, was one of the axioms 
of his thinking. Without it, he would have been 
but a sacrilegious juggler. 

The solitariness of Hawthorne's life, partic- 
ularly in its formative years, united with a habit 
of ruminating over his work to determine in 
some measure the character of his themes. His 
note-books, which have never been adequately 
studied in their relation to his finished stories, 
are filled with random suggestions. But the 
purely fanciful themes were for the most part si- 
lently discarded ; those that really bore fruit are 
the imaginative ones. To this long brooding 
of a fertile mind over an apparently insignificant 
symbol we are indebted for the rarest produc- 
tions of Hawthorne's genius. To take the most 
familiar example, it was in his tale of" Endicott 
and the Red Cross" that he first described "a 
young woman with no mean share of beauty, 
whose doom it was to wear the letter A, em- 

[90] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

broidered in scarlet cloth, on the breast of her 
gown." M iss Elizabeth Peabody said promptly, 
" We shall hear of that letter by and by " ; — and 
year after year that bit of embroidery glowed 
in the cloudy depths of Hawthorne's mind, 
until, when he drew it forth, it had become one 
of the master conceptions of the world's fiction. 
In similar fashion we can discover how the 
germs ofthe" House of the Seven Gables" and 
the " Marble Faun " were rooted, like vagrant 
truths, in the soil of that fertile imagination. 

Yet a mind of this strange retentiveness — 
almost secretiveness — has, with all its fertility, 
certain defects. Some ideas committed to it be- 
come refined, over-refined, refined away. Sym- 
bolism, always a mode of art congenial to Haw- 
thorne, is sometimes allowed to take the place 
of expression. The individual loses color and 
precision of outline, and becomes a mere type. 
Hawthorne's imagination seldom misled him ; 
it had the inevitableness of genius. But his 
fancy, playing upon superficial resemblances, 
sporting with trivial objects, was his besetting 
weakness as a writer. It is none the less a weak- 
ness because it first drew public attention to 
him, or because it is in itself exquisite. Deli- 

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Park-Street Papers 

cate and lovely as his fancies were, Hawthorne 
often played with them too long. He over- 
elaborated them ; he painted his lily instead of 
letting it alone. It is true that as he advanced 
in life there is less and less of this. Contact with 
the world, with real joys and sorrows, deepened 
his insight, and dispelled some of the pretty, 
playful, soap-bubble allegories with which his 
more idle and solitary hours had been too often 
filled. He mio;ht have staved in Salem and de- 
scribed Town Pumps and invented Celestial 
Railroads to the end of his days without draw- 
ing any nearer to the "Scarlet Letter." But 
little by little his powers were directed upon 
adequate objects ; his imagination, rather than 
his fancy, dictated his choice of themes ; and 
he followed that unerring guide. 

Fortunate, also, was his instinct for shaping 
his work of art from that which lay nearest. All 
of his romances except one, and all of his short 
stories except a very few, are given a New Eng- 
land background. To the task of describing the 
landscape and people most familiar to him, 
Hawthorne brought an extraordinary veracity, 
and a hand made deft by years of unwearied 
exercise. Yet he is equally eifective in dealing 

[ 9^ ] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

with the Pilgrims, or the stately days of the 
Massachusetts Province. He loves, in stories 
like the Seven Gables, to bring the past, gray 
with legendary mist, into the daylight of the 
present. Here the foreground and background 
are perfectly harmonized; the present is sig- 
nificant in proportion as its tones are mellowed 
and reinforced by the sombre past. Thus Hilda 
and Kenyon,NewEnglanders of Hawthorne's 
day, walk over the bloodstained pavements of 
old Rome, and the ghostly shadows of the 
Eternal City are about them as they move. 
Hawthorne himself considered the " House of 
the Seven Gables" and the "Marble Faun" 
his best achievements. They belong to the 
same type. Time and place and circumstance 
conformed to his feeling for the Romantic. In- 
deed, his sensitiveness to the Romantic note 
affects his characters throughout. They include 
a wide range of individualities, but they are not 
depicted by the usual methods of realistic por- 
traiture. New Englanders in the main, few of 
them exhibit that New England eccentricity of 
speech and manner so assiduously observed by 
short-story writers since Hawthorne's time. 
He did not trouble himself — and us — with 

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Park-Street Papers 

dialect. Indeed, all his characters, like Brown- 
ing's, talk much the same language. His men 
and women are visible through a certain atmos- 
phere which does not blur their features, yet 
softens them. Even his fullest and richest per- 
sonalities, like Zenobia, maintain a distance 
from us. 

His plots likewise, various as they are, have 
the simplicity of true Romance. His most 
widely read production, the story of Hester 
Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, has practi- 
cally no plot whatever; it is a study of a situ- 
ation. For moral problems, in spite of the in- 
genious practice of Mr. Henry James and Mr. 
Meredith, can usually be reduced to a very 
simple equation. An elaborate, many-threaded 
plot, full of incidents and surprises, of unex- 
pected labyrinths and heaven-sent clues, would 
destroy the very atmosphere which Hawthorne 
seeks to create. The action of his romances is 
seldom dramatic, in the strict sense of the word. 
To dramatize the " Scarlet Letter " is to coarsen 
it. The deliberate action, the internal moral 
conflict, the subtle revelation of character, are 
all suited to the descriptive, not the dramatur- 
gic method. They are in perfect keeping with 

[94] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 



) 



the tone which Hawthorne instinctively main- 
tained. He placed the persons who were to ^ 
exemplify his themes now in the present, now \ 
in the past, if possible in the half-light of mingled 
past and present, and out of the simplest, most 
familiar materials he learned to compose a pic- 
ture so perfect in detail, so harmonious in key, 
that even were the theme of slight significance, 
he would still vindicate his right to a high place 
among literary artists. 

Yet perhaps the most convincing test of f 

Hawthorne's merit is one of the most obvious. 
Open one of his books anywhere, and read a 
page aloud. Whatever else there may be, here 
is style. Hawthorne was once asked the secret 
of his style. He repHed dryly that it was the 
result of a great deal of practice; that it came 
from the desire to tell the simple truth as hon- 
estly and vividly as he could. We may place 
alongside of this matter-of-fact confession a 
whimsical dream which he once noted in his 
journal, to the effect that the world had become 
dissatisfied with the inaccurate manner in which 
facts were reported, and had employed him at 
a salary of a thousand dollars a year, to relate 
things of importance exactly as they happened. 

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Is simple truth-telling, then, explanation 
enough ? Hawthorne had, indeed, a passion for 
observing and reporting facts. Sometimes these 
facts are insignificant. For instance : " The 
aromatic odor of peat smoke in the sunny au- 
tumnal air is very pleasant." Mr. Henry James 
has remarked of this sentence that when a man 
turned thirty gives a place in his mind — and 
his inkstand — to such trifles as these, it is 
because nothing else of superior importance 
demands admission. But this is much like say- 
ing that because a botanist happens to put a 
dandeHon into his can he has, therefore, no eye 
for an orchid. To the genuine collector there 
are no trifles, and Hawthorne had at one time 
the collector's passion. No French or Russian 
realist had more of it. Certain pages of his note- 
books and early sketches make one exclaim, 
" Here is a man with the gifts of Balzac or Tol- 
stoi ! Why might he not have become a great 
realistic writer, endowed as he was with this 
thirst for the actual? He would so well earn 
that thousand dollars a year!" But the facts, 
as such, were not enough to hold Hawthorne 
long; he pressed on beyond the fact to the 
truth behind it. As he developed, he collected 

[96] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

certain facts to the neglect of others. He ob- 
served, but he also philosophized. If, there- 
fore, the technique of his descriptive work often 
reminds us of the great realists, the use he 
makes of his talent as an observer and reporter 
forbids us to group him with them. He was 
born with too curious an interest in the unseen 
world. However striking his technical gifts, he 
wrote as a romancer, a creator. 

And what a writer this provincial New Eng- 
lander is ! We talk glibly nowadays about paint- 
ing and writing with one's eye on the object. 
Hawthorne could do this when he chose; but 
think of writing with your eye on the consciences 
of Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne, 
and never relaxing your gaze till the book is 
done ! What concentration of vision ! What 
exposing power ! Hawthorne's vocabulary is 
not extraordinarily large ; — nothing like Bal- 
zac's or Meredith's ; but the words are chosen 
like David's five smooth stones out of the 
brook. The sentences move in perfect poise. 
Their ease is perhaps a little self-conscious ; — 
pains have been taken with their dressing, — it 
is not the careless inevitable grace of Thack- 
eray, — but it is a finished grace of their own. 

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Park-Street Papers 

It is a style exquisitely simple, except in those 
passages where Hawthorne's fancy gets the bet- 
ter of him, and leads him into forced humor, all 
the worse for its air of cultivated exuberance. 
Yet even when he sins against simplicity, he is 
always transparently clear. The certainty of 
word and phrase, the firmness of outline are 
marvelous, when we consider the airy nature of 
much of his material ; he may be building cloud- 
castles, but it is in so pure a sky that the white 
battlements and towers stand out sharp-edged 
as marble. 

Because Hawthorne gave his work such an 
elaborate finish, some readers are apt to forget 
its underlying strength. Our own day of natur^ 
alistic impressionism and correct historical cos- 
tuming has invented a hundred sensational and 
clever ways of tearing a passion to tatters. But it 
is well for us to remember that the real strength 
of a work of fiction is in the conception under- 
lying it, and that the deepest currents of thought 
and feeling are 

Too full for sound and foam. 

Strong-fibred, sane, self-controlled, as was 
Hawthorne, one may nevertheless detect in his 
style that melancholy vibration which marks 

[98] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

the words of all — or almost all — those who 
have interpreted through literature the more 
mysterious aspects of life. This pathos is pro- 
found, though it is quiet ; it is an undertone, but 
not the fundamental tone ; "the gloom and ter- 
ror may lie deep, but deeper still is this eternal 
beauty." 

Yet the most marked quality of Hawthorne's 
style is neither simplicity, nor clearness, nor re- 
serve of strength, nor undertone of pathos. It 
is rather its unbroken melody, its verbal rich- 
ness. Its echoes linger in the ear; they wake old 
echoes in the brain. The touch of a few other 
men may be as perfect, the notes they evoke 
more brilliant, certainly more gay; but Haw- 
thorne's deep-toned instrument yields harmo- 
nies inimitable and unforgettable. The critics 
who talk of the colorless life of New England 
and its colorless reflection in literature had 
better open their Hawthorne once more. His 
pages are steeped in color. They have a dusky 
glory like the great window in Keats's "Eve of 
St. Agnes": — 

. . . diamonded with panes of quaint device. 

Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes. 

As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; 

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And in the midst, *mong thousand heraldries. 

And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 

A shielded scutcheon blush' d with blood of queens and kings. 

This subdued splendor of Hawthorne's col- 
oring is a part of the very texture of his style ; 
compared with it the brushwork of his suc- 
cessors seems thin and washy, or else crude 
and hard ; it is like comparing a rug woven in 
Bokhara with one manufactured in Connecticut. 
But surely our New England soil is not wholly 
barren if even for once it has flowered into such 
a consummate artist as Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
who, while he devoted his art to the interpreta- 
tion of truth, was nevertheless dowered with 
such instinct for beauty that his very words 
glow like gems and echo like music, and grant 
him a place among the few masters of English 
style. 

After all, we do not celebrate the centenary 
of Hawthorne's birth merely because he was a 
skillful, an admirable writer. Rather do we take 
a solemn pride in commemorating one who 
steadfastly asserted the claims of spiritual things. 
He wrote in a generation fortunate in its bal- 
ance between the hard material struggles of the 

[ loo ] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

colonist and pioneer, and the far more dan- 
gerous materialism that comes with luxury and 
power. America had lived through sufficient 
history to give perspective to her romancers ; 
she had not yet undergone the demoralizing 
strain of prosperity which has followed upon 
the epoch of the Civil War. Never were Amer- 
icans so profoundly idealistic, so temperament- 
ally fit to understand the spiritualized art of 
Hawthorne, as between 1840 and i860. And 
our pride in him is touched with a subtle regret 
at the disappearance of a fine civilization, pro- 
vincial as it was. A more splendid civilization 
is still to come, no doubt ; but the specific con- 
ditions that blossomed into many of Haw- 
thorne's tales are irrevocably gone. Great as he 
seems when we look back, he seems still greater 
when we look around us. It is no service to 
Hawthorne's memory to disparage the indus- 
trious men and women who are producing our 
fiction of to-day. But to glance at them, and 
then to think of him, is to perceive the start- 
ling difference between talent and genius. 

No one would claim that that genius was 
faultless in all its divinations. Feeble drawing, 
ineffective symbolism, morbid dallying with 
C loi ] 



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mortuary fancies, may indeed be detected in his 
books. That sound critic Edwin P. Whipple, 
who is passing into such ill-deserved oblivion, 
once said of Hawthorne: "He had spiritual 
insight, but it did not penetrate to the sources 
of spiritual joy." The note of robust triumph, 
of unquestioning faith in individual happiness 
and in the sure advance of human society, is 
indeed too rarely heard in his writings. In re- 
peating his paternoster, the stress falls upon 
" Forgive us our trespasses " rather than upon 
"Thy Kingdom come." 

Yet he believed that the sin and sorrow of 
humanity, inexplicable as they are, are not to 
be thought of as if we were apart from God. 
A neighbor of Hawthorne in Concord has re- 
cently written me that once, when death entered 
a household there, Hawthorne picked the finest 
sunflower from his garden, and sent it to the 
mourners by Mrs. Hawthorne with this mes- 
sage : " Tell them that the sunflower is a sym- 
bol of the sun, and that the sun is a symbol of 
the glory of God." A shy, simple act of neigh- 
borhood kindness, — yet treasured in one mem- 
ory for more than forty years ; and how much 
of Hawthorne there is in it! The quaint flower 
[ 102 ] 



The Centenary of Hawthorne 

from an old-fashioned garden ; the delicate sym- 
pathy; the perfect phrase; the faith in the power 
of a symbol to turn the perplexed soul to God! 
Hawthorne was no natural lover of darkness, 
but rather one who yearned for light. The 
gloom which haunts many of his pages is the 
long shadow cast by our mortal destiny upon 
a sensitive soul, conscious of kinship with the 
erring race of men. The mystery is our mys- 
tery, perceived, and not created, by that finely 
endowed mind and heart. The shadow is our 
shadow; the gleams of insight, the soft radi- 
ance of truth and beauty, are his own. 



The Centenary of 
Longfellow 



The Centenary of 
Longfellow 

We allow the centenaries of our men of letters 
to pass without general observance. The one 
hundredth anniversaries of the births of Haw- 
thorne and of Emerson were, indeed, duly cele- 
brated at Brunswick, Salem, Concord, and Bos- 
ton. But these were exercises of local piety, the 
expression of a laudable provincial pride. A 
wide national recognition of such anniversaries 
does not yet come easily to us; "they order 
this matter better in France,** with a more spon- 
taneous clashing of the cymbals, a more graceful 
processional to the shrine. It is possible that the 
anniversary of Longfellow*s birth may be more 
generally and tenderly remembered than that 
of other American authors of his time. Multi- 
tudes of his countrymen, to whom Hawthorne 
and Poe were mere necromancers, and Emerson 

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a shining seraph announcing unintelligible 
things, thought of Longfellow as a familiar 
friend. But twenty -live years have already 
elapsed since his death. To a busy republic, 
swift to forget even its best servants, a quarter 
of a century is a long period, and the startling 
political and social changes which have been 
brouohtabout within that interval make it seem 
even longer still. Longfellow's noble life and 
work have indeed kept him in remembrance; 
but apparently it is only Lincoln, among all 
the figures of that generation, who has grown 
steadily in popular fame. 

It is inevitable that there should be some 
reaction against the extraordinary popularity 
which Longfellow's poetry enjoyed during his 
lifetime. Nor should his most loyal admirers 
quarrel with the spirit which to-dav seeks to 
scrutinize the causes of such a popularity. To 
the true lover of books, the quality of a poet is 
everything; the counting of the heads of the 
poet's audience is but an idle occupation. It is 
difficult for Colonel Higginson to write other- 
wise than delightfully, but I wish that he had 
not begun his " Life of Longfellow " by giving 
the British Museum statisricsof the demand for 

[ 'o8 ] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

Longfellow's writings, and the editions in the 
various languages of the world. Do not even the 
publicans and the historical novelists the same? 
Such figures — unless they cover more than a 
single generation — raise more doubts than they 
allay. Nowhere is a little wise distrust of the 
popular judgment more sanative than in the 
field of poetry. The hterary mass-meeting set- 
tles nothing. If it records an enormous majority 
for some candidate to-day, it is likely to-morrow 
to vote his name wearisomely familiar, imitating 
that illogical but very human and likable Athe- 
nian who petulantly marked his ballot against 
Aristides. 

Yet if a little skepticism as to the wisdom of 
the general contemporary verdict is wholesome, 
a complete skepticism is rash. I know a shrewd 
and slightly cynical publisher who insists that 
the popularity of a piece of literature is always 
in an inverse ratio to its excellence. This is a 
pleasing and easily remembered formula. It 
collapses, however, when you say " Hamlet.'* 
And 1 think it collapses when you say " Evan- 
geline." The presumption may be, and for cer- 
tain fastidious minds it always will be, that a 
popular poem cannot have a high literary rating. 

[ i09 ] 



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But it is one of the most unsafe presumptions 
upon which a critic can put out to sea. There is, 
to be sure, a natural commonplaceness which 
forms a soKdarity of sympathy between certain 
authors and their pubhc. I once asked a poet : 
"Howdoesour friend Blank, the novelist,man- 
age to hit the average vulgar taste with such won- 
derful accuracy?" "He doesn't hit it," said 
the poet gloomily, " he is it." But this complete 
identity of author and audience must be sharply 
distinguished from that exquisite gift possessed 
by a few men of essential distinction, — like 
Gray, like Goethe, like Longfellow, — of giving 
perfect expression to certain feelings which are 

in widest commonalty spread. 

Both of these classes of writers may produce a 
widely popular poem or book. But the differ- 
ence in the result is that which separates " David 
Harum " from " The Vicar of Wakefield," and 
"The Old Oaken Bucket" from the "Elegy in 
a Country Churchyard." Longfellow, it is true, 
sometimes allowed himself to print common- 
place pieces. Like most poets, and like every 
American poet of his generation except Poe, he 
published too much. He had a sympathic per- 
C no] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

ception of the moods of unsophisticated people, 
and he usually preferred to interpret such feel- 
ings rather than the more recondite aspects of 
human experience. He felt, as we all feel, that 
the rain is beautiful, and he did not hesitate to 
say in verse, — 

How beautiful is the rain ! 
That he ran a certain risk in thus carrying sim- 
plicity to the verge of guilelessness he must 
have been aware, through the early and constant 
parodies upon this vein of his poetry. But he 
knew his course. He gained and held his great 
circle of readers by precisely this obedience to 
his instinct. His contemporaries felt what Em- 
erson (with perhaps a touch of unconscious 
patronage) wrote about " Hiawatha" : " I have 
always one foremost satisfaction in reading your 
books, that I am safe." To speak safely to one 
generation is to speak with some hazard to the 
generations following, and Longfellow's beau- 
tiful work has already paid a penalty for his 
overwhelming immediate success. 

In one other respect, too, we must note a 
sort of whispered reservation that is sometimes 
made when Longfellow's name is spoken. One 
need not fear to utter it, even in the magazine 

[ "I ] 



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to which he was such a friendly and honored 
contributor. Was he, after all, a great poet? 
Mr. Longfellow himself, with his delicate sense 
of literary values, would have respected the 
scruple which prompts such a question. One 
may easily imagine what he would have replied. 
He was once showing the Craigie House, with 
his unmatched courtesy, to one of those igno- 
rant bores whom he patiently allowed to ravage 
his golden hours. The stranger asked if Shake- 
speare did not live somewhere about there. " I 
told him,*' said Mr. Longfellow, " I knew no 
such person in this neighborhood.** Exactly. 
No such person as Shakespeare has ever been 
in the Cambridge Directory. But what of it? 
Why should size be snatched at as the chief cri- 
terion of poetic performance ? The nightingale, 
type and symbol of all poets, is but a small 
brown bird. 

How Longfellow himself regarded an indu- 
bitably great poet may be seen in his incompar- 
able sonnets upon the " Divina Commedia." 
Dante's poem is there Hkened to a cathedral, 
within whose doors the tumult of the time dies 
away, — 

While the eternal ages watch and wait. 

[ "2] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

Old agonies and exultations haunt these shad- 
ows ; here are echoes of tragedies and of celestial 
voices. The windows are ablaze with saints and 
martyrs; the organ sounds; the unseen choirs 
sing the Latin hymns ; and the head is bowed in 
the presence of the ineffable mysteries of the 
Faith. Nothing built by human hands has the 
dark grandeur of such a minster. There is only 
one other place that may be as sacred, — and 
that is the home. To open Dante is like passing 
within the solemn portal of a cathedral ; to read 
Longfellow is like entering the Craigie House. 
The fine dignity of the vanished eighteenth 
century is here. From the doorway stretches a 
gentle landscape, with its winding river and low 
hills. All around there is quiet beauty, with 
lilacs and elms and green lawns sweet with chil- 
dren's voices ; within the old mansion wait hos- 
pitality, and gracious courtesy, and the savor of 
worn books, and the sanctities of long, intimate 
converse with all lovely and honorable things. 
It is a friend's roof, and it welcomes us in hours 
when the cathedral oppresses or appalls. 

It is no wonder that men and women of New 
England blood are loyal to Longfellow. His 

[ "3 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

stock was of the finest of our sifted wheat. John 
Alden, the young lover in his most perfect nar- 
rative poem, — that "bunch of May-flowers 
from the Plymouth woods/' — was his maternal 
ancestor. Among his forbears w^ere men distin- 
guished for gaUantry in the country*s service, 
and for stainless integrity of private character. 
His boyhood in Portland was typical of the 
time and section, in its moral sweetness, its in- 
tellectual hunger and fine ambition. He had the 
look of his fiimily, — the slim straight figure, 
the waving brown hair, the blue eves, the quickly 
flushed cheeks. He read in his father's library 
the sound English classics of the eighteenth 
century, but the first book to fascinate his im- 
agination was Irving's " Sketch-Book." " I was 
a schoolboy when it was published," he wrote 
forty years afterward, " and read each succeed- 
ing number with ever increasing wonder and 
delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its 
melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of re- 
very, — nay, even by its gray-brown covers, 
the shaded letters of its titles, and the fair, clear 
type, which seemed an outward symbol of its 
style." Such was the boy of whom — at the ripe 
age of six — his schoolmaster had testified that 

[114] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

" his conduct last quarter was very correct and 
amiable/* and of whom a classmate at Bowdoin 
— in that famous class of 1825 — said, "It ap- 
peared easy for him to avoid the unworthy." 

One is reminded of the remark made by 
Puvis de Chavannes in the hour of his long- 
deferred triumph as an artist. "Who was your 
master ? " he was asked. " I never had any mas- 
ter," said the painter, thinking perhaps of his 
restless, friendless journeys from one atelier to 
another; "my master has been a horror of cer- 
tain things." That fineness of nature which 
made it seem easy for Longfellow, as for his 
classmate Hawthorne, to avoid the unworthy, 
was perfected by the firm intellectual discipline 
and the clear flame of aspiration that character- 
ized the years spent in the struggling country 
college. Typical of that period was his un- 
ashamed acknowledgment of his heart's ambi- 
tion, revealed in a well-known letter to his 
father : " The fact is, 1 most eagerly aspire after 
future eminence in literature; my whole soul 
burns most ardently for it, and every earthly 
thought centres in it." How charming it is, 
this boyish ardor! Longfellow's was but one of 
hundreds of such voices rising from every home 

[ 1-5] 



Park-Street Papers 

of learning in New England, three quarters of 
a century ago. We hear them still, in the fresh 
tones of this eager, generous, high-minded 
youth, who had the good fortune to realize his 
dream. 

It was fulfilled, as most dreams are, in unfore- 
seen ways. Through the range and the quality 
of Longfellow's life-work he was enabled to 
perform a spiritual service for his countrymen. 
He was to become a national, rather than a 
merely provincial figure. In our imaginations, 
indeed, he lingers as a lovely flowering of all 
that was most fair in the New England tem- 
perament and training, in that long blossoming 
season which began with Emerson's "Nature" 
and ended — no one knows just when or how 
— within a decade or two after the close of the 
Civil War. There is but too much truth in Mr. 
Oliver Herford's witty description of the pre- 
sent-day New England as the abandoned farm 
of literature. Apparently the soil must lie fal- 
low for a while, or some one must plough deeper 
than our melancholy short-story writers seem to 
go. But when the old orchard was bearing, what 
bloom and fruitage were hers! 

Yet Longfellow was far more than a melo- 
["6] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

dious voice of that New England springtime. 
It became his privilege to interpret to his gen- 
eration the hitherto alien treasures of European 
culture. He brought Spain and Italy, France 
and Germany and the shadowy northern races, 
into the consciousness of his countrymen. 
While Irving and Bryant were the pioneers in 
this adventure, it was through Longfellow, 
more than any other man, that the poetry of 
the Old World — the romance of town and 
tower and storied stream, the figures of monk 
and saint and man-at-arms, of troubadour and 
minnesinger, of artist and builder and dreamer 
— became the familiar possession of the New. 
This immense service was made possible 
through Longfellow's scholarship. When he 
was graduated from Bowdoin, at the age of 
eighteen, he had a good knowledge of Latin and 
Greek, and a fair amount of French. Receiving 
the promise of a professorship of modern lan- 
guages at his alma mater, upon the condition 
that he should prepare himself by European 
study, he sailed in 1826 for a three years' ab- 
sence. After two years and a half he was able 
to write to his father: "I know you cannot be 
dissatisfied with the progress I have made in 

[ "7] 



Park-Street Papers 

my studies. I speak honestly, not boastfully. 
With the French and Spanish languages I am 
familiarly conversant, so as to speak them cor- 
rectly, and write them with as much ease and 
fluency as I do the English. The Portuguese I 
read without difficulty. And with regard to my 
proficiency in the Italian, I have only to say 
that all at the hotel where I lodge took me for 
an Italian until I told them I was an Ameri- 
can." He then proceeded to master German, 
and in subsequent years familiarized himself 
with several other languages of northern 
Europe. During the five or six years of his 
Bowdoin professorship, and for eighteen years 
at Harvard, he gave careful and competent in- 
struction in these languages, lecturing regularly 
upon various foreign literatures, and superin- 
tending the work of the picturesque and often 
extremely difficult foreign gentlemen (the 
"four-in-hand of outlandish animals all pull- 
ing the wrong way, except one") who acted as 
his assistants. Of the extent and accuracy of 
his linguistic attainments his published trans- 
lations from no less than nine languages are a 
sufficient proof. His college tasks left him 
scanty leisure, his eyesight was early impaired, 

[ "8] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

and he gave himself freely to the claims of hos- 
pitality ; and yet in spite of these drawbacks his 
acquaintance with the literatures of mediaeval 
and modern Europe became extraordinary. He 
made no pretense, however, to strictly philo- 
logical erudition, and he would probably have 
regarded with mild surprise the formidable ap- 
paratus of learning which our contemporary 
scholars love to bring to bear upon the weak- 
est points in their opponent*s line. One may 
even venture to think that Longfellow would 
have found such philological contests rather 
dull. He played by preference the open game, 
moving with a delightful swiftness and ease 
from folklore and drinking-song to missal and 
codex. His prose volumes, "Hyperion" and 
" Outre-Mer," reflect something of the variety 
of his reading, and his natural sympathy with 
that European Romantic movement which was 
still occupied, in the thirties, with revivifying 
the past and lending an emotional coloring to 
the present. For years after his return from his 
first long sojourn in Europe this seemed to be 
his calling: to give a few American boys some 
bright glimpses of those illuminated pages 
which had fascinated his own fancy. 

[ "9] 



Park-Street Papers 

Then, after a decade of teaching, came the re- 
velation of his true power. He discovered that 
he was himself a poet. He had written boyish 
verses, such as we all write, and the constant 
practice in metrical translation had perfected his 
sense of poetical form. But here was a new im- 
pulse. His Journal notes [Dec. 6, 1838]: "A 
beautiful holy morning within me. I was softly 
excited, I knew not why; and wrote with peace 
in my heart and not without tears in my eyes, 
'The Reaper and the Flowers, a Psalm of 
Death.* I have had an idea of this kind in my 
mind for a long time, without finding any ex- 
pression for it in words. This morningit seemed 
to crystallize at once, without any effort of my 
own." How familiar that "soft excitement" is 
to those who Hsten to the confidences of the 
poets; and how inadequate an explanation, 
after all, of the miracle by which a poem comes 
into being 1 

Longfellow was now in his thirties. He had 
been called from Brunswick to Cambridge. The 
wife of his youth was dead in a foreign land, 
and he had returned from that melancholy 
second visit to Europe, to live with books and 
a few friends. His youthful ambition for emi- 
[ 120 ] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

nence had deepened into a love of the beauti- 
ful and a desire to speak truth. " Fame must 
be looked upon only as an accessory," he wrote, 
in a heart-searching letter to his friend Greene. 
" If it has ever been a principal object with me 
— which I doubt — it is so no more/' Like 
Hawthorne, he found fame when he ceased to 
seek it. " The Psalm of Life," "The Reaper 
and the Flowers," "The Wreck of the Hes- 
perus," " The Skeleton in Armor," " The 
Rainy Day," "Maidenhood," "Excelsior," 
followed one another as thrushes follow one 
another in the deep woods at dawn, with mel- 
odies effortless and pure. Everybody listened. 
Two of these poems, "The Psalm of Life" 
and "Excelsior," have indeed paid the price of 
a too apt adjustment to the ethical mood of 
that "earnest" moment in America. They 
were not so much poems as calls to action, and 
now that two generations have passed, those 
trumpets rust upon the wall. It is enough that 
they had their glorious hour. 

To appeal through verse to the national as 
well as to the individual conscience was not for 
Longfellow, as it was for Whittier and Lowell, 
a natural instinct. His path lay for the most 

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part outside the field of political poetry. Yet 
by his anti-slavery poems of 1 842 he placed 
himself unmistakably on record against the 
most gigantic evil of his day ; and in his anti- 
militaristic poem, "The Arsenal at Springfield," 
he protested against the most widespread evil 
of our own. History loves to be ironical. Long- 
fellow lived to see those very Springfield rifles 
help to end slavery in the United States ; he 
lived to see "Enceladus arise" and shake off 
by force of arms the shackles of Italy; but he 
did not live long enough to hear his "holy 
melodies" of international love succeed to the 
diapasons of war. The high priests of the present 
dispensation assure us that his vision of univer- 
sal disarmament is only a dream, and a danger- 
ous dream. Yet there are and will be others to 
dream it until they make the dream come true. 
The happiness of an assured recognition by 
the public was now followed by the deeper joy 
of anew home, but his habitation still remained 
the Craigie House. Friends multiplied, al- 
though a chosen few, like Felton and Sumner, 
had still their privileged place. Longfellow be- 
gan to build in fancy a great poem, dealing with 
no less vast a theme than " the various aspects 
[ 122 ] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle and 
Modern Ages." For thirty years it was to oc- 
cupy his mind. The second portion, " The 
Golden Legend/' was finished first : a lovely, 
full-blown rose of learning, of sympathetic in- 
sight, of imagination. The third part, "The 
New England Tragedies," followed after nearly 
a score of years; and "The Divine Tragedy," 
which now introduces the completed poem, 
was written last. Thus the poet's task was ul- 
timately finished ; whether it was truly accom- 
plished, according to the measure of his aspi- 
ration, who can say? He was not by nature a 
tragic poet. The New England dramas, faith- 
fully as they reproduce the colonial atmosphere, 
seem but a provincial conclusion for the poet's 
comprehensive scheme. The sacred theme of 
"The Divine Tragedy," and the scrupulous 
fidelity with which Longfellow weaves the 
words of the Scripture into his pattern, tend to 
remove the poem from the unimpeded scrutiny 
of criticism. We know that it possessed a deep 
significance to the author, that more is meant 
than meets the ear, completely as the ear is 
charmed. It is one of the instances, not rare 
in the history of letters, where a poet's great- 
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est work — as conceived by himself — has been 
relatively unregarded by his public. 

For it is unquestionable that to his contem- 
poraries, both here and abroad, Longfellow 
was recognized as the author of tender lyrics, 
and of " Evangeline," " Hiawatha," and " The 
Courtship of Miles Standish." These narra- 
tive poems have become so secure a national 
possession that criticism seems an intrusion: it 
is like carrying a rifle into a national park. And 
it is to be suspected that the most formidably 
armed critic would return from his unlawful 
excursion with a rather empty bag. He would 
discover, no doubt, a few weak hexameters in 
" Evangeline," an occasional thinness of tone 
in "Hiawatha." He would point out the essen- 
tially bookish origin of all three poems, or in 
other words — what is true enough — that 
Longfellow loved to enter the House of Life 
by the Hbrary door. Very possibly there might 
never have been an " Evangeline " if there 
had not been a " Hermann and Dorothea" 
first. Very probably Felton and T. W. Par- 
sons and other scholarly friends of Longfellow 
were right in their feeling that the dactyhc 
measure of " Evangeline " is less suited to our 

[ 124 ] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

English speech-rhythms than the iambic. Cer- 
tainly the hexameters of " Miles Standish," 
with their frequent iambic substitutions, are 
more supple and racy than those of the earlier 
poem. But this does not take us very far. We 
are no nearer the heart of the mystery of poetry 
for knowing that the rhythm of " Hiawatha " 
was borrowed from the Finnish "Kalevala," and 
that the legends were taken, with due acknow- 
ledgments, from Schoolcraft. After all, the cru- 
cial question about Hiawatha's canoe was not 
where he got his materials, but whether the 
finished craft would float ; and it is enough to 
say of the poem, as of the gayly colored canoe 
itself, — 

And the forest's life was in it. 

All its mystery and its magic. 

All the lightness of the birch-tree. 

All the toughness of the cedar. 

All the larch's supple sinews; 

And it floated on the river. 

Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 

Like a yellow water-lily. 

" Evangeline " had been finished on the 
poet's fortieth birthday, and "The Courtship 
of Miles Standish" was written when he was 
fifty-one. That decade, so rich in poetic pro- 

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ductiveness, was the happiest of Longfellow's 
life. He had been granted what Southey, an- 
other library poet, had craved for himself, — 

Books, children, leisure, all the heart desires. 

Success — a ghastly calamity for some writers 
— did not spoil the simplicity of his nature 
and the sincerity of his art. As the years went 
by, he discovered that college teaching, which 
had been pleasant enough at first, grew weari- 
some. His journal is full of half-humorous, 
half-plaintive references to the " treadmill " and 
the "yoke"; he likens himself to a miller, his 
hair white with meal, trying to sing amid the 
din and clatter; he finds it hard to lecture on 
so delicate a subject as Petrarch " in this harsh 
climate, in a college lecture-room, by broad 
daylight." In 1854 he surrendered his college 
chair to Lowell, and gave himself hencefor- 
ward wholly to his true vocation. He could not, 
indeed, summon the ungracious courage to 
protect himself from the merciless demands of 
callers, correspondents, and admirers of every 
sort. In one week he wrote nothing but let- 
ters ; in one forenoon he entertained fourteen 
callers, thirteen of them English. But aside 

C 126] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

from these intrusions, which are the unavoid- 
able impost-tax upon popularity, he was en- 
abled, in almost as full a degree as Tennyson 
after 1850, to ripen upon the sunny side of the 
wall. The sheltered life was best, no doubt, 
for that delicate nature of his, disliking to strive 
and cry in the streets, and finding, as he con- 
fesses in his journal, "life and its ways and ends 
prosaic in this country to the last degree." He 
was too true a poet not to feel the possibility of 
a poetic inspiration in the dominant chords of 
that competitive civilization which was already 
vibrating all about him. He notes in a morning 
walk: "I see the red dawn encircling the hori- 
zon, and hear the thundering railway trains, ra- 
diating in various directions from the city along 
their sounding bars, like the bass of some great 
anthem, — our national anthem." But he never 
— save possibly in "The Buildingof the Ship" 
— tried to set that anthem to music of his own. 
One is reminded of that other sensitive and with- 
drawn person, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who said 
regretfully of the rude life which he witnessed 
upon the wharves of Boston, "A better book 
than I shall ever write was there." Yet it would 
not be strange if both Hawthorne and Long- 
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fellow were to outlast the author of "McAn- 
drew's Hymn.'* 

In fact, the last decade — which has ordered 
its writers to serve up life in the raw, to write 
with their eye upon the object, and to sacrifice 
beauty to the thrilling sense of contact with act- 
ual experience — has been hardly fair to the 
Cambridge and Concord men. It is undeniable 
that there was a transient phase of " softness " in 
the forties, which Longfellow did not escape. 
He thought it "exquisite to read good novels 
in bed with waxlights in silver candlesticks," 
and exclaimed, after reading Fremont's account 
of the Rocky Mountain expedition of 1842, 
"But, ah, the discomforts!" He remained in 
lifelong unacquaintance with the physical as- 
pects of his own country. Yet w^e forget how 
quickly the bookish man, provided he have the 
searchlight of imagination upon his desk, can 
dispense with first-hand observation of scenery. 
Coleridge wrote the "Hymn to Mont Blanc" 
and "The Ancient Mariner" without hav- 
ing seen the Vale of Chamonix and the tropic 
ocean. The northwestern and southwestern 
American landscapes in " Hiawatha " and 
" Evangeline " are no less " true to nature" than 

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The Centenary of Longfellow 

the realistic picture of the rainy morning in Sud- 
bury, in the "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The 
misfortune of the home-keeping poets lies not 
so much in any artistic limitation, as in our own 
lurking sense that some bolder and more en- 
franchising spiritual adventures might have 
been theirs if they had more often gone down 
to the sea in ships and done business in great 
waters. 

Yet we know but little, either from his jour- 
nal or his poems, of Longfellow's inner life. 
When his hour of dreadful trial came, in 1861, 
he met it with a gentleman's silent courage. In 
the years that followed he turned again for solace 
to his translation of Dante, begun long before. 
He found also, in his device of the Wayside 
Inn, a happy mode of linking together many a 
mellow story which he still wished to tell. The 
various Interludes reveal, to a fuller degree 
than any previous work of his, the ease of the 
finished artist, playful and adroit. The stories 
are for the most part Old World tales, — of 
Arabia and the East, of Sicily and Tuscany, 
of the green Alsatian hills and the gray Baltic, 
— but here too are "Paul Revere's Ride " and 
"Lady Wentworth." It is inevitable that in 
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such a rich collection there should be some tales 
in which Longfellow's masters in the story-tell- 
ing art would have surpassed him ; stories to 
which Boccaccio would have imparted a gayer 
drollery, or Chaucer a more robust breath of the 
highroad. But we who have loved these stories 
in youth rarely tire of them, and the most bril- 
liant, I think, are those that are most completely 
the product of Longfellow's own fancy, — 

— an invention of the Jew, 
Spun from the cobwebs of his brain. 
And of the same bright scarlet thread 
As was the Tale of Kambalu. 

With the completion of "The Divine Tra- 
gedy," the trilogy now published under the title 
"Christus: A Mystery*' was finished. Long- 
fellow began almost immediately another long 
dramatic poem, " Michael Angelo," which was 
found in his desk after his death. It is difficult 
to characterize it fitly, or to realize all the subtle 
bonds of affinity which drew the thoughts of 
the aging Longfellow to the last survivor of the 
greatest artistic period of Italy. Mr. Horace 
Scudder,one of the most sympathetic and best- 
equipped criticsofiVmerican verse, used to con- 
sider this poem as Longfellow's apologia pro 

[ 130 ] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

vita sua^ wherein the reader is always aware of 
Longfellow's presence, "wise, calm, reflective, 
musing over the large thoughts of life and art/' 
I confess that I cannot see so clearly as this 
beneath the smooth, shadowed surface of the 
poem. It is Longfellow's most finished blank 
verse, — averse that sings, mourns, and aspires, 
but never quite laughs ; indeed, this was no time 
for laughter, after the sack of Rome. In lieu of 
action, there is a succession of charmingor grave 
conversations, woven together out of the gos- 
sipy pages of Cellini, Vasari, and many another 
chronicler; to read them is to see again the yel- 
lowing travertine, the broken arches, and the 
stone pines against the Roman sky ; it is to feel 
the pathos of unfulfilled dreams, of a titanic, 
unavailing struggle against a petty world ; in a 
word, it is to watch the red melancholy sunset 
of the Renaissance. But it is a strange apologia 
for the American poet. 

Although the last two decades of Longfel- 
low's life produced these longer poems, with a 
deeper symbolism which may escape the casual 
reader, they also gave to the world some of his 
best-known and most characteristic work. The 
range of his poetic faculty and the ripeness of 

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his technical skill were exhibited in lyrics fully 
as lovely and varied as the old : in descriptive 
pieces like "Keramos" and "The Hanging of 
the Crane"; in such personal and "occasional" 
verses as "The Herons of Elmwood" and the 
noble "Morituri Salutamus"; and finally in 
sonnets, — like those upon Chaucer, Milton, 
the " Divina Commedia," "A Nameless Grave," 
Felton, Sumner, "Nature," "My Books," — 
which are already secure among the imperish- 
able treasures of the English language. 

There is no formula which adequately ex- 
plains and comments upon such a career. It is 
apparent that Longfellow possessed, to a very 
notable degree, an instinctive literary tact. He 
knew, by a gift of nature, how to comport him- 
self with moods and words, with forms of prose 
and verse, with the traditions, conventions, un- 
spoken wishes of his readers. Literary tact, like 
social tact, is more easy to feel than to define. It 
does not depend upon learning, for professional 
scholars conspicuously lack it. Nor does it turn 
upon mental power, or moral quaHty. Poe,who 
could not live among men without making ene- 
mies, moved in and out of the borderland of 
prose and verse with the inerrant grace of a wild 

[ 132 ] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

creature, sure-footed and quick-eyed. Lowell, 
whose social tact could be so perfect, sometimes 
allowed himself, out of sheer exuberance of spir- 
its, to play a boyish leap-frog with the literary 
proprieties. The beautiful genius of Emerson 
often stood tongue-tied and awkward, confusing 
and confused, before problems of literary be- 
havior which to the facile talent of Dr. Holmes 
were as simple as talking across a dinner-table. 
But Longfellow's literary tact was always im- 
peccable: he divined what could and could not 
be said and done under the circumstances ; he 
escorted the Muses to the banquet hall without 
stepping on their robes; he met the unspoken 
thought with the desired word, and — a greater 
gift than this — he knew when to be silent. 

It is possible to misjudge this fineness of 
artistic instinct, this professional dexterity. 
Browning, who analyzed, and perhaps over- 
analyzed, Andrea del Sarto as the "faultless 
painter," has, by dint of forcing us to consider 
what Andrea lacked, made us too forgetful of 
what he really possessed. Once made aware of 
the Florentine's limitations in passion and imag- 
ination, we tend, under the spell of Browning's 
genius, to give him insufficient credit even for 

[ ^33 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

his grace in composition, his pleasant coloring, 
his suave facility. And it is true that the greatest 
painters have something which Andrea some- 
how missed. No doubt the most masterful poets 
have certain quahties which we do not find in 
Longfellow. But that is no reason for failing to 
recognize the qualities which he did command 
in well-nigh flawless perfection. There are can- 
did readers, unquestionably, who feel that they 
have outgrown him. But for one, I can never 
hear such a confession without a sort of pain.. It 
may be that these readers are naturally passing 
on from room to room of the endless palace of 
poetry. It may be that they seek a ruder, more 
athletic exercise of the mind than Longfellow 
offers them, and that they find this stimulus in 
Browning or Whitman or Lucretius. Concern- 
ing such instinctive preferences there can be no 
debate ; the world of letters is fortunately very 
wide. But sometimes, it is to be feared, a loss 
of enjoyment in Longfellow is the symbol of a 
lessening love for what is simple, graceful, and 
refined. 

These characteristics of Longfellow*s art 
were rooted in his nature. Here is an entry 
from his journal, on August 4, 1836 : "A day 

[ 134 1 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

of quiet and true enjoyment, travelling from 
Thun to Entlebuch on our way to Lucerne. 
The time glided too swiftly away. We read the 
* Genevieve' of Coleridge and the ' Chris ta- 
bel ' and many scraps of song, and little Ger- 
man ballads of Uhland, simple and strange. At 
noon we stopped at Langnau, and walked into 
the fields, and sat down by a stream of pure 
water that turned a mill ; and a Httle girl came 
out of the mill and brought us cherries ; and 
the shadow of the trees was pleasant, and my 
soul was filled with peace and gladness." Now- 
adays many a tourist motors through Switzer- 
land without ever discovering the valley of 
Langnau ; or, whirling past it, has no desire to 
rest under the shadow of the trees by that 
stream of pure water. Indeed, it would be fool- 
ish for the hurrying tourist to tarry there. He 
would not find in himself, as Longfellow did, 
a new peace and gladness ; and besides, he might 
miss his dinner in Lucerne. 

A clear transparency of spirit, an anima Can- 
dida like VirgiFs, an unvarying gentleness and 
dignity of behavior : these were the traits which 
endeared Longfellow to those who knew him. 
The delicacy of his literary tact was one secret 

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of his welcome, but the deeper secret — though 
this too was an open one — lay in the beauty 
of his character. There could be no better il- 
lustration of this than the familiar story of the 
pathetic but perfect tribute paid by Emerson, 
who, broken by age, and with a memory that 
had almost lapsed, attended Longfellow's fu- 
neral. They had been friends for nearly forty 
years. " I do not remember the name of the 
gentleman whose funeral we have attended," 
he said; "but he had a beautiful soul." 

Those of us who once begged for Mr. Long- 
fellow's autograph, or besieged, shyly or bra- 
zenly, the always open door of his home, can 
do no more than transmit our own impression 
of his personality. The coming generations will 
select their own poets, in obedience to some in- 
stinct which cannot be divined by us. For my- 
self, I have no doubt that Americans, in a far- 
distant future, will look back to the author of 
"Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" as we look 
back to his favorite Walter von der Vogel- 
weide, a Meistersinger of a golden age. Now 
and again, very likely, he may be neglected. He 
is already thought negligible by some clever 

[ ^36 :\ 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

young men of over-educated mind and under- 
educated heart, who borrow their ethics from 
the cavemen, their pragmatic philosophy from 
the drifting raft-men, and who, in the presence 
of the same material from which Longfellow 
wrought delightful poetry, — the same land- 
scape, the same rich past and ardent present 
and all the "long thoughts" of youth, — are 
themselves impotent to produce a single line. 

But Longfellow's reputation may be trusted 
to safer hands than theirs. There can be no 
happier fortune than that which has made him 
the children's poet. These wise little people 
know so well what they like ! They are untrou- 
bled with scruples and hesitancies. With how 
sure an instinct do they feel — without com- 
prehending or analyzing — the note of true 
poetry! Will Stevenson be one of the enduring 
writers? I look at his twenty-five volumes in 
shining red and gold, and cannot tell; but when 
I hear a child murmuring " My Shadow," I 
think I know. If there were a language for such 
childish secrets, the sweet voices that recite with 
delicious solemnity ^'The Children's Hour" 
might tell us more about Longfellow than we 
professional critics — with our meticulous 

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pedantry, our scrutiny of " sources," our ears 
so trained to detect over-tones that we lose the 
melody — shall ever learn. 

The children go to the heart of the matter. 
And so do many of those larger children — the 
men and women of simple soul who keep an 
unsophisticated way of looking at the world. 
There are some very highly organized persons 
who amuse themselves with poetry as they 
would with chess, or Comparative Religion, or 
" The Shaving of Shagpat." They can criticise 
and expound verses, and invent theories of po- 
etics, and compile anthologies. But these val- 
uable members of the intellectual community 
are not the real readers of poetry. To find the 
true audience of a Heine, a Tennyson, a Long- 
fellow, you are not to look in the Social Regis- 
ter. You must seek out the shy boy and girl 
who live on dull streets and hill roads — no 
matter where, so long as the road to dreamland 
leads from their gate ; you must seek the work- 
ing-girls and shopkeepers, the "schoolteachers 
and country ministers" who put and kept Long- 
fellow's friend Sumner in the Senate ; you must 
make a census of the lonely, uncounted souls 
who possess the treasures of the humble. These 

[138] 



The Centenary of Longfellow 

readers are sadly ignorant of Ibsen and Bernard 
Shaw and Fogazzaro ; but when the conversa- 
tion shifts to Shakespeare they brighten up. 
They know their Shakespeare, and they know 
Longfellow. They are sometimes described as 
the intellectual " middle class " ; but a poet may 
well say, as a President of the United States 
once said of a camp-meeting at Ocean Grove, 
"Give me the support of those people, and I 
can snap my fingers at the rest." 

It is folly to worship numbers. But it is a 
deeper folly not to perceive that among the un- 
critical masses there may be a right instinct for 
the essence of poetry. It is glory enough for 
Longfellow that he is read by the same persons 
who still read Robert Burns and the Plays of 
Shakespeare and the English Bible. Until sim- 
plicity and reverence go wholly out of fashion 
he will continue to be read. In that quaint 
Flemish city which Longfellow's verses have 
helped to make famous there is a tiny room, 
in the Hospital of St. John, in which are treas- 
ured some of the loveliest pictures of Hans 
Memling. The years come and go, in Bruges; 
the streets and canals grow quieter here, noisier 
there, than they used to be; the belfry that 

[ ^29 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

Longfellow admired looks down to-day on ad- 
vertisements of Sunlight Soap and American 
Petroleum. Yet in that hushed room in the 
inner courtyard of the Hospital, visitors still 
linger entranced, as of old, over Memling's 
Marriage of St. Catherine, his Adoration of the 
Magi, and his Shrine of St. Ursula. Purity of 
color and of line are there, delicate brush-work, 
a charming fancy, a clear serenity of spirit ; they 
are masterpieces of a born painter whose nature 
was also that of the dreamer, the story-teller, 
the devotee. There are Venetian and Roman 
painters far greater than Hans Memling. And 
there are poets whose strength of wing and 
fiery energy of imagination are beyond Long- 
fellow*s. But no truer poet ever lived. 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

On the day when he last entered the Atlantic 
office, in January, 1907, Mr. Aldrich seemed, 
for the first time, to have grown old. One of 
his friends spoke of it, as he went out. Up to 
that morning, the weight of seventy years had 
scarcely seemed to touch the erect, jaunty figure. 
The lines that time had written around his clear 
blue eyes and firm mouth conveyed no hint of 
senility. His hair was scarcely gray. His voice, 
slightly husky in its graver, sweeter tones, re- 
tained a delicious youthful crispness as it curled 
and broke, wave-like, into flashing raillery. He 
had just completed his poem for the Longfellow 
centenary, his first verse after some years of si- 
lence ; and when it was praised to his face — for 
who could help praising it ! — he blushed with 
pleasure like a boy. Yet he had passed three- 
score and ten, and the shadow, invisible as yet 
and quite unheralded, was drawing very near. 

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For many years he had been wont to visit 
more or less regularly the editorial room which 
still claimed his name and fame as one of its 
treasured possessions. Perched upon the edge 
of a chair, as if about to take flight, he would 
often linger by the hour, to the delight of his 
listeners. His caustic wit played around every 
topic of conversation. He did not disdain the 
veriest "shop-talk" concerning printers' errors 
and the literary fashions of the hour. " Look at 
those boys ! " he exclaimed once, as he picked 
up an illustrated periodical containing the por- 
traits of a couple of that month's beardless 
novelists. "When I began to write, we waited 
twenty years before we had our pictures printed ; 
but nowadays these young fellows have them- 
selves photographed before they even sit down 
to write their book." Himself a fastidious com- 
poser and reviser, Mr. Aldrich was severely 
critical of current magazine literature. " That 
was a well-written essay," he once said of an At- 
lantic contribution which he liked, " but you will 
find that you used a superfluous 'of upon the 
second page." It was very rarely that he praised 
a contemporary poem. Mr. S. V. Cole's " In 
ViaMerulana" and some of the exquisite lyrics 

[ H4 ] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

of Father Tabb are the only verses of recent 
years which I now recall as having won his un- 
qualified approbation. More than once I have 
heard him declare that he would have rejected 
Mr. Kipling's "Recessional" if it had been 
offered to the Atlantic, — so extreme was his 
dislike for one or two harsh lines in that justly 
celebrated poem. The one American poem 
which he would have most liked to write, was, 
he said, Emerson's " Bacchus," — where, amid 
inimitable felicities, there are surely harsh lines 
enough. 

One of the most pleasant traits of Mr. Al- 
drich's comments upon men of letters was his 
unfailing respect and admiration for the well- 
known group of New England writers whose 
personal friendship he had enjoyed. His gift 
for witty derogation found employment else- 
where; towards Emerson, Longfellow, Whit- 
tier, and Lowell his attitude was finely reverent, 
as befitted a younger associate. He was fond of 
retelling that anecdote of his own boyish daring 
which appears in his "Ponkapog Papers," to 
the effect that when first entering James T. 
Fields's office in the Old Corner Bookstore, 
his eyes fell upon that kindly editor and pub- 

[ H5] 



Park-Street Papers 



lisher's memorandum book, open on the table. 
Mr. Fields was absent for the moment, and the 
youthful poet could not help noticing the im- 
pressive list o^ agenda: "Don't forget to mail 
R. W. E. his contract," — "Don't forget O. 
W. H/s proofs," etc. Whereupon the "young 
Milton," who certainly deserved to succeed in 
his profession, wrote upon the memorandum 
book, " Don't forget to accept T. B. A.'s poem," 
and disappeared. The poem was accepted, paid 
for, and, truest kindness of all, — as Mr. Al- 
drich asserted, — was never printed. But the 
resourceful youth never lost his deferential at- 
titude toward the bearers of those famous ini- 
tialed names that had once preceded his own. 

Of his early literary friendships with the New 
York set of writers in his "Home Journal" and 
"Mirror" days he often talked entertainingly, 
and in a freer vein. He knew Whitman, for 
example, and liked him personally, although he 
would never admit that Whitman was a poet 
except by virtue of here and there a single 
phrase. Many a time has the present writer en- 
deavored to convert Mr. Aldrich from this state 
of heathen blindness as to Whitman's genius, 
but the debates used to end illogically with Mr. 

[ 146 ] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Aldrich*s delightful story of a certain nine dol- 
lars which Whitman once borrowed from him 
— magnificently, but alas, irrevocably — in 
PfaiF's genial restaurant on Broadway. Never 
did Aldrich appear more truly the poet than in 
these light reminiscent touches upon the varied 
adventures of his youth. He had gone out 
against the Philistines armed with no weapon 
except a finely pointed pen. He had written 
no line dishonorably, or unworthily of his 
craftsman's conscience. He had compelled re- 
cognition, and taken his seat unchallenged 
among the choicest company of American men 
of letters. It amused him to look back upon 
his early career as a struggling journalist, to 

Chirp over days in a garret. 
Chuckle o'er increase of salary. 
Taste the good fruits of our leisure. 
Talk about pencil and lyre, — 
And the National Portrait Gallery. 

He neither forgot nor forgave some of his old 
antagonists in that journalistic world ; but one 
liked him all the better for the sensitiveness of 
nature which left him still resentful of some an- 
cient slight, or still happily mindful of a com- 
pliment earned when he was twenty. Few of 

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Park-Street Papers 

the "irritable tribe" of poets could, however, 
keep themselves more perfectly in hand. The 
cool audacity of his "Don't forget to accept 
T. B. A/s poem" ripened into an easy mastery 
of many of the arts of life. His gay confidence, 
when seated among his friends or guests, re- 
minded one of some veteran commander of an 
ocean liner, enjoying, at the head of the "cap- 
tain's table," the deserved deference of the 
company. 

Yet he seemed the poet, likewise, in his air 
of detachment from the immediate concerns of 
the people who surrounded him. Thrown by 
force of circumstances, in his later life, into the 
agreeable society of the idle rich, he got and 
gave such pleasures as are only there obtain- 
able; but he never abdicated his essential citi- 
zenship among the dreamers and artists. That 
he would have produced more printer's "copy" 
under the spur of harsh necessity is easily de- 
monstrable, but it does not follow that this 
conceivably ampler production would have ex- 
hibited any finer quality than is now found in 
the prose and verse of his collected works. He 
once wrote some suggestive verses on "The 
Flight of the Goddess," — the fickle muse who 

[ 148 ] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

loves poets in their garret days and deserts them 
in prosperity. But these verses do not demand 
an autobiographical interpretation. Mr. Al- 
drich's own muse was of a long constancy. At 
nineteen he proved his kinship with the rarest 
spirits of his time, and for the next half-century 
there was no year when his friends and readers 
would not have spoken of him primarily as a 
maker of poetry. He always kept some avenue 
of escape from the prosaic. In his boyhood at 
Portsmouth the sea was ever at the end of the 
street r^ — 

I leave behind me the elm-shadowed square 
And carven portals of the silent street. 
And wander on with listless, vagrant feet. 
Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air 
Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care 
Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet. 
At the lane's ending lie the white- winged fleet. 
O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare ? 
Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far — 
Gaunt hulks of Norway; ships of red Ceylon; 
Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores ! 
'T is but an instance hence to Zanzibar, 
Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun; 
Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores ! 

Besides this sea-longing, so inbred in the na- 
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Park-Street Papers 

tives of New England seaport towns, there was 
some delicate strand of foreignness among the 
ancestral fibres of Aldrich's nature, his heritage 

from that 

creature soft and fine. 
From Spain, some say, some say from France, 

whom he has described in the lines entitled 
" Heredity." He touches this thought again 
in his sonnet "Reminiscence" : — 

Though I am native to this frozen zone 

That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead; 

Though the cold azure arching overhead 

And the Atlantic's never-ending moan 

Are mine by heritage, I must have known 

Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled; 

For in my veins some Orient blood is red. 

And through my thought are lotus blossoms strown. 

It was fitting that three years of his impres- 
sionable youth should have been passed in the 
New Orleans of the forties, where the rich col- 
oring of the past still lingered, and where, 
though Cotton was striving to be king, Ro- 
mance was queen. When the boy was brought 
back to Portsmouth to prepare for college, he 
had become, as "The Story of a Bad Boy" 
humorously portrays, the veriest Southern fire- 

[ 150] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

eater. His counting-room experiences in New 
York — which followed the abandonment of 
his college career upon his father's death in 
1849 — ^Iso brought him into touch with ways 
of life quite alien to those of his New Hamp- 
shire birthplace. Before he was twenty he had 
graduated from the counting-room into the 
Broadway school of journalists and poets, and 
had issued his first volume of verse, " The 
Bells, by T. B. A." This was in 1855, the 
year of Whittier's "Barefoot Boy" and Whit- 
man's " Leaves of Grass." Aldrich's first vol- 
ume is now a rarity, and all of its nearly fifty 
pieces — with their echoes of Chatterton, Tom 
Moore, Poe, and Longfellow — have disap- 
peared from the standard editions of his Poems. 

Two years later, in November, 1857, ap- 
peared the first number of the Atlantic 
Monthly. I have before me a yellowing note 
written by Aldrich, in the following May, to 
F. H. Underwood, who was then acting as 
Lowell's assistant upon the magazine. Under- 
wood, at his chief's request,' had returned one 
of Aldrich's poems with some suggestions as 
to changes in wording. 

' Lowell's letter to Underwood is printed on p. 264. 

C 151 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

Home Journal Office, May 25, 1858. 
Dear Sir, — I have been trying for the last 
hour to alter the "Blue Bell" verses. "Mute 
worshipers of Christ" is simply bad; but 
"dawning" and "morning" form a perfect 
rhyme when we remember the ^^ fancies " and 
^^pansies " of the old poets. It has taken you 
some time to find out that such rhymes are 
inadmissible ; but you seem to have good au- 
thority in the following pasquinade^ which I 
clip from the "Boston Post" of May 24: — 

Poet, I *m sure I have an ear! 

Editor. No doubt! — I've known a poet with a pair. 
And very long ones — who was not aware 
That ' morn ' and * dawn ' have not the proper 

chime. 
By a long shot, to make a decent rhyme. 

As I cannot make the changes you require, 
I shall, of course, retain my verses. 
Yours, etc., 

T. B. Aldrich. 
Mr. F. H. Underwood. 

Having thus vindicated his dignity, the 
youthful bard, who was himself assistant editor 
of the " Home Journal," apparently continued 
to reflect upon the Atlantic's suggestion. But 

[ 152] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

he did not yield at once. In the Carleton edi- 
tion of his Poems, 1863, "The Blue Bells of 
New England" contains the erring stanza := — 

All night your eyes are closed in sleep. 

But open at the dawning; 
Such simple faith as yours can see 
God's coming in the morning. 

In the Ticknor and Fields' Blue and Gold 
edition of 1865, however, the second line of the 
stanza becomes 

Kept fresh for day's adorning, 
no doubt to Mr. Underwood's satisfaction. 
Aldrich's first poetical contribution to the At- 
lantic was "Pythagoras," in June, 1 860 ; his first 
story, which excited Hawthorne's curiosity as 
to the author, and prompted some beautiful 
words of praise from the romancer, was " Pere 
Antoine's Date- Palm : a Legend of New Or- 
leans," in June, 1862. 

The letter to Underwood reveals one trait 
which Aldrich possessed in common with Ten- 
nyson, his chief master and guide in the art of 
poetry. Both men were quick to profit by ad- 
verse criticism. Some American scholar will ulti- 
mately, no doubt, edit Aldrich's youthful poems, 
as Mr. Churton Collins has edited the earliest 

[153 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

work of Tennyson, with the aim of showing, by 
means of the successive verbal alterations, the 
tireless patience and acquired cunning of the 
born craftsman in verse. The files of the At- 
lantic will yield him two striking illustrations, 
drawn from Aldrich's maturer work. In De- 
cember, 1874, Edgar Fawcett, in reviewing his 
poems, quoted approvingly " The Lunch," — 
a dozen lines of genre painting in the Keats- 
Tennyson manner, closing as follows : — 
Two China cups with golden tulips sunny. 
And rich inside with chocolate like honey; 
And she and I the banquet-scene completing 
With dreamy words, — and very pleasant eating ! 

The critic remarked that the last four words 
marred the spirit of ethereal daintiness till then 
so deliciously apparent. Whereupon Mr. Al- 
drich, with the happiest aptitude for taking 
second thought, substituted the present version 
of the last line, — 

With dreamy words, and fingers shyly meeting. 

Again, in January, 1877, ^^' Howells, 
whose unsigned Atlantic criticisms of Aldrich's 
successive volumes are models of friendly tact 
and delicate instruction, quoted the quatrain 
"Masks": — 

[ 154] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise 
And shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes; 
But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, 
'T is ten to one you find the girl in tears. 

Mr. Howells suggested that the strong effect 
in the last line was weakened by what seemed to 
him a mistaken colloquiality ; and in the " Com- 
plete Poems" the line now reads, — 

How wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears. 

We must not linger over such details. They 
will serve for concrete illustration of the qualities 
which made Aldrich respected and admired by 
his fellow-writers. By 1865, the year of his mar- 
riage and removal to Boston as the editor of 
"Every Saturday" for Ticknor and Fields, he 
was already widely known as the author of re- 
fined and tender verse, as a capable and shrewd 
editorial worker, and as a clever man of the 
world. His new employers printed his Poems 
in one of their celebrated Blue and Gold edi- 
tions. For the latitude of Boston this was com- 
parable to an election to the French Academy. 
Aldrich was not yet thirty. Rarely has there 
been a more fortunate Return of the Native. 
And nevertheless, although he was to be iden- 
tified with Boston henceforward until the end 



Park-Street Papers 

of his life, he was never to lose his engaging air 
of detachment from New England^s cherished 
enterprises. He cared no more for the practical 
later phases of Transcendentalism than for the 
earlier speculative ones. The various "re- 
forms," philanthropies, "causes," of his excel- 
lent neighbors did not interest him deeply. 
The intellectual and social evolution of New 
England in the last quarter of the nineteenth 
century is not to be traced in his poetry or his 
prose. His favorite reading at the time of his 
Atlantic editorship was French novels. The 
sombre inland New England of our own school 
of short-story writers, — the gaunt pastures, the 
lonely white farm-houses, the fierce emotional 
energy, the tragedies of baffled will and thwarted 
natural instincts, — all this was foreign to the 
happy sensuousness of his nature. 

The fifteen years following 1865 were Al- 
drich^s most productive period. For nine years 
he edited " Every Saturday." He wrote for 
"Our Young Folks " the most popular of all 
his books, that " Story of a Bad Boy " in which 
Portsmouth is pictured under the name of 
Rivermouth, and Tom Bailey is but the thin- 
nest of disguises for the youthful Aldrich. Some 

[ 156] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

of the Atlantic's present readers rem ember wait- 
ing eagerly for the next installment of "The 
Bad Boy "; if they will read it over again, after 
an interval of nearly forty years, they will find 
that Binny Wallace's drifting out to sea has 
lost nothing of its pathos, and that the fight 
between Tom Bailey and Conway is just as 
glorious a combat as of old. Aldrich's tech- 
nique as a writer of the short story has not been 
excelled by that of any American, even by Poe, 
although he ventured upon no daring atmos- 
pheric effects and did not go far afield for his 
characters. He loved to mystify the inexperi- 
enced reader, and he arranged some neatly sur- 
prising denouments. " Marjorie Daw," his best- 
known short story, is a classic example of this 
swift and astonishing " curtain." " There is n't 
any Marjorie Daw ! " Neither is there any Miss 
Mehetable's Son ; Mademoiselle Olympe Za- 
briski is a youth whose beard is getting too much 
for him; the fierce " Goliath" turns out to be 
a little panting tremulous wad of a lap-dog ; 
" Our new neighbors at Ponkapog " are only 
a pair of orioles ; and the charming Mrs. Rose 
Mason of " Two Bites at a Cherry " proves, 
to the consternation of both hero and reader, 

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to have married again ! Aldrich was too clever 
a workman to rely exclusively upon his favorite 
method. "A Sea Turn," one of his latest sto- 
ries, is a flawless handling of the comedy of 
situation ; he wrote humorous and pathetic char- 
acter sketches in the style of Irving and Haw- 
thorne ; and in " Quite So " and " The White 
Feather" he touches with admirable restraint 
upon poignant tragedies of the Civil War. 

" Prudence Palfrey," " The Queen of Sheba," 
and "A Stillwater Tragedy" — all of which 
first appeared as Atlantic serials — exhibit Al- 
drich's deft mastery of prose and his skill in 
composing a species of tale halfway between 
romance and actuality. "Semi-idyllic "was Mr. 
Howells's word for " Prudence Palfrey " in 
1874; "in fact," he added, "the New Eng- 
land novel does not exist." " A Modern In- 
stance" and " The Rise of Silas Lapham" had 
not then been written. Whatever one may 
think of the intellectual or imaginative limita- 
tions of the type of fiction which Aldrich here 
attempted, the details of these longer stories 
are wrought with the artistry of a poet. Ride 
out of Rivermouth on a June morning with 
Edward Lynde : "Now and then, as he passed 

C 158] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

a farm house, a young girl hanging out clothes 
in the front yard — for it was on a Monday — 
would pause with a shapeless snowdrift in her 
hand to gaze curiously at the apparition of a 
gallant young horseman." This is no longer 
Rockingham County, New Hampshire; we are 
in Arcadia. Some connoisseur of women ought 
to collect the adorable vignettes that are scat- 
tered everywhere through Aldrich's prose; 
Marjorie Daw in the hammock, swaying "like 
a pond-lily in the golden afternoon"; Martha 
Hilton, " with a Up like a cherry and a cheek 
like a tea-rose " ; Margaret Slocum's eyes, 
" fringed with such heavy lashes that the girl 
seemed always to be in half-mourning" ; Mrs. 
Rose Mason, with her " long tan-colored gloves 
— Rue de la Paix" — in the chill and gloom 
of the Naples Cathedral ; Anglice, " a blonde 
girl, with great eyes and a voice like the soft 
notes of a vesper hymn " ; or young Mrs. New- 
bury, " looking distractingly cool and edible — 
something like celery— in her widow's weeds." 
All of Aldrich — save what is disclosed upon 
the highest levels of his poetry — is in that 
witty, charming, delicately sensuous descrip- 
tion of young Mrs. Newbury. No other prose 
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written in his generation has quite the same 
combination of qualities; but if Alphonse 
Daudet had been born in Portsmouth and 
compelled to write serials for a decorous Bos- 
ton magazine, Aldrich might have found a 
rival in his own field. 

It was to this matured and versatile talent 
that the conduct of the Atlantic Monthly- 
was intrusted, upon Mr. Howells*s resignation 
in 1 8 8 1 . For nine years Mr. Aldrich sat in his 
tiny editorial room overlooking the Granary 
Burying Ground, reading manuscripts, scan- 
ning proof-sheets, — though he delegated more 
of this drudgery than his contributors supposed, 
— and making witty remarks to his assistant. 
He had the comforts — both before and since 
his time considered too Capuan for an Atlantic 
editor in office hours — of a pipe and a red 
Irish setter. Once the setter ate up a sonnet. 
" How should he know it was doggerel ? " ex- 
claimed Mr. Aldrich compassionately. He had 
leisure for frequent travel abroad, and for the 
cementing of many delightful friendships. Pe- 
culiarly happy in his home life, he cultivated a 
gracious hospitality. His editorial reign, as one 
looks back upon it, was not so much Capuan 
C i6o] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

as Saturnian. The Literature of Exposure had 
not yet been born, and the manners of the 
market-place were not thought good form in 
magazine offices. Mr. Aldrich printed poems 
by Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, 
Dante Rossetti, Stedman, and Sill, with an 
occasional lyric of his own. Henry James, 
Thomas Hardy, Miss Murfree, Arthur S. 
Hardy, Miss Jewett, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 
Marion Crawford, and Mrs. Oliphant were 
among the writers of fiction. John Burroughs 
and Bradford Torrey wrote outdoor papers. 
Parkman and Fiske contributed historical ar- 
ticles. Now and then appeared articles by 
H. D. Lloyd, Edward Atkinson, Richard T. 
Ely, Laurence Laughlin, and Walter H. Page, 
in token that the " age of economists," which 
Burke dreaded, was close at hand. But the dis- 
tinctive note of the Atlantic in the eighties was 
its literary criticism, contributed by a group of 
reviewers who often preferred to write anony- 
mously. Their criticisms maintained a more se- 
vere standard than that of any critical periodical 
in the country except the "Nation," and they 
exhibited a combination of learning with ur- 
banity, which, with the present development 
[ i6i ] 



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of specialization among scholars, seems to be 
growing more and more rare. 

It would be idle to search the eighteen vol- 
umes of the Atlantic edited by Mr. Aldrich 
for any very plain indication of his personality, 
except his fondness for clear, competent, and 
workmanlike writing. Contributions poured 
into his little office, and he made such selec- 
tions as he saw fit. It was before the day of 
Wild West feats of editorial chase, capture, 
and exhibition. The Atlantic was like a stanch 
ship saiHng a well-charted course, and Aldrich, 
who was fond enough of salt water and knew 
how to steer, took his trick at the wheel with 
pleasure. Some of the unkindly necessities in- 
cident to his vocation naturally irritated him. 
He disliked to give pain. " Here goes for 
making twenty more enemies," he was wont 
to say as he sat down in the morning at his 
desk. When urged by the present writer to 
prepare some account of his editorship for the 
fiftieth anniversary number of the Atlantic, he 
said that if he told anything he would like to 
tell the story of the warlike contributor who 
once threatened him with personal violence, 
but who, upon being challenged by the editor 

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Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

to appear at Park Street to make good his 
threat, failed to come to time. As Mr. Aldrich 
described this imminent encounter of a score 
of years ago, his blue eyes flashed fire, and one 
could see little Tom Bailey, with both eyes 
blinded by big Conway, standing up to him, 
and thrashing him too, on the playground at 
Rivermouth. Here is the contributor's letter, 
preserved by Mr. Aldrich and printed at his 
desire. 

T. B. Aldrich, 

Editor of The Atlantic Monthly, 
No. 4 Park Street, 
Boston. 

Sir: — On the 24th day of February and 
again on the 7th inst. I gave you opportunity 
to apologize for the willfully offensive manner 
in which you treated me in relation to my manu- 
script entitled Shakespeare's Viola, 

You retained that manuscript nearly seven 
weeks. Then you returned it and expressed your 
regret that you could not accept it. 

That is to say, you intended to deceive me by 
the inference that the manuscript was declined on 
its merits. 

The truth was and is you did not read it nor 

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even open the package. Therefore you could not 
judge its merits nor say, with truth, that you 
regretted to decline it. 

You decline to apologize. 

My robust nature abhors your disgusting 
duplicity. You are a vulgar, unblushing Rascal 
and an impudent audacious Liar, 

Which I am prepared to maintain anywhere, 
any time. You ought to be publicly horse- 
whipped. Nothing would gratify me more than 
to give you a sounder thrashing than anyjyo« 
have yet received. 

Moreover I am determined that the Literary 
Public shall know what a putrid scoundrel and 
Liar you are. 



Boston, March 30, 1887. 

Then follows, in Aldrich's beautiful open 
handwriting, the penciled comment : " The gen- 
tleman with the ^robust nature' was politely 
invited to call at No. 4 Park St. on any day that 
week between 9 a. m. and 3 p. m.; but the * ro- 
bust nature ' failed to materialize." 

One smiles at such things, of course; but now 
that Mr. Aldrich is gone from the places that 

[ '64 ] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

once knew him, it is these trivialities, rather than 
his accomplishment and his fame, that come first 
to the mind. Perhaps it is the very security of 
his fame which lends to these anecdotal mem- 
ories of his editorship a sort of ironic relief. 
"The power of writing one fine line," said 
Edward FitzGerald, "transcends all the Able- 
Editor ability in the ably-edited universe." 
Aldrich wrote not merely one fine line, but hun- 
dreds of them, and it is inconceivable that they 
will all pass out of human memory. Time, which 
is sure to winnow so sternly the work of the more 
famous New England poets, will find that Al- 
drich has done most of the winnowing himself. 
The text of his "Complete Poems" represents 
his own final choice of what was most excellent. 
In his lighter vein he was acknowledged to be 
unrivaled upon this side of the water. But even 
the fairylike daintiness of "Latakia," "Cory- 
don," "At a Reading," " Pampina," " Palabras 
Carinosas," and " A Petition," or the pure lyri- 
cism of "A Nocturne," "Pillared Arch," "I ^11 
not confer with Sorrow," and " Imogen," and 
still more the popular " Baby Bell," — written, 
like Rossetti's " Blessed Damozel," at nineteen, 
— fail to represent the full power of his ripened 

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mind and art. There is a deeper note in his lines 
in memory of Bayard Taylor and upon Booth's 
portrait, in " Sea-Longings," "At the Funeral 
of a Minor Poet," and the startling verses, 
" Identity." The darker questionings that oc- 
casionally shadowed the sunny Greek sky of 
Aldrich's fancy are reflected in "An Untimely 
Thought," "Apparitions," and "Prescience." 
No American poet save Longfellow has writ- 
ten such perfect sonnets as " I vex me not," 
"Sleep," "Fredericksburg," "Enamored ar- 
chitect of airy rhyme," " Andromeda," and 
others not inferior to these. Indifferent as he 
was toward public affairs, the memories of the 
Civil War inspired two of his elegiac pieces, 
"Spring in New England" and the "Ode on 
the Shaw Memorial." He was stirred to the com- 
position of a fine sonnet upon reading William 
Watson's splendid poetical invective against the 
Armenian outrages. " Unguarded Gates " was 
the result of many weeks of excitement, quite 
unusual with him, over the national dangers in- 
volved in unrestricted immigration. But these 
were almost his only excursions into the field 
of communal verse, whether political or social. 
The one great personal sorrow of his life, the 
[ i66] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

death of his son Charles in 1904, came after his 
work as a poet was finished. 

Aldrich wrote Tennysonian blank verse with 
consummate skill, as may be seen in "Wynd- 
ham Towers," "White Edith," and other nar- 
rative pieces. His Oriental poetry is picturesque, 
but, like Mrs. Rose Mason's gloves, suggests 
the Rue de la Paix, — or at least Horace Vernet 
and Fromentin. His wit, his cleverness of 
phrase, his keen sense of the comic, and his life- 
long interest in the stage and stage-folk, might 
have made him, one would think, an unexcelled 
writer of comedies. Yet his chief ventures in 
dramatic composition — aside from some early 
unpreserved fragments — are tragedies. " Mer- 
cedes," as played by Julia Arthur, was a notable 
performance, although narrow in its range of 
dramatic forces. "Judith of Bethulia," a dra- 
matized version of his early narrative poem " Ju- 
dith and Holofernes," was an experiment which 
brought new zest into his closing years. The 
play was skillfully put together, and its third act 
was powerful, but it was acted, on the first night 
at least, with a crude commonness that failed 
alike to do justice to Aldrich's rich lines and to 
compel the admiration of the indifferent play- 
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goer. The failure of the play was a pity, yet one 
may question whether a success would have 
made any difference in the total impression left 
by Aldrich upon his generation. 

In reviewing his latest volumes of prose for 
the Atlantic,' I ventured to apply to Mr. Al- 
drich a sentence from his own charming essay 
upon Herrick: "A fine thing incomparably 
said instantly becomes familiar, and has hence- 
forth a sort of dateless excellence." The secret 
of that dateless excellence was possessed by Al- 
drich himself. To judge merely by their mood, 
many of his poems might have been written in 
the garden of Herrick*s Devon parsonage, or 
a whole century later, upon the sloping lawn 
of Horace Walpole's villa of Strawberry Hill. 
Aldrich would have been a delightful compan- 
ion for George Selwyn and Harry Montague, 
and he could also have joyously discussed the 
art of polishing verse and prose with Theophile 
Gautier and Prosper Merimee. His spirit es- 
capes the rigid limits set by the biographical 
dictionary. In his choice of metrical forms and 
his vocabulary he is obviously indebted to Ten- 
nyson's volume of 1 842, yet it is usually im- 
^ In November, 1903. 

[ 168] 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

possible to determine by internal evidence — 
as one often can in Tennyson's case — in what 
decade of the nineteenth century his various 
poems were written. The general trend of the 
philosophical, religious, or political speculation 
of Aldrich*s day is not discoverable in his work. 
He had no such ethical and doctrinaire preoc- 
cupations as colored the verse of Whittier and 
Arnold, and troubled, though it sometimes 
strangely exalted, the later lyrics of Tennyson. 
Aldrich's poetry, like that of Keats and Ros- 
setti, is free from the alloy of essentially un- 
poetical elements ; it bears no tra.CQs of Tendenz; 
its excellence is dateless. 

In this tranquil aloofness from the passions 
and convictions of the hour, and in the beautiful 
perfection of its workmanship, lies its promise 
of long life. There will always be some readers 
who are no more likely to forget Aldrich's 
poetry than Mozart's music or the crocus 
breaking through the mould in March. The 
very lightest of his pieces, marked " Fragile " 
as they are, are dear to the spirit of beauty, and 
will possess something of the perpetually re- 
newed immortality of the cobwebs sparkling 
on the lawn and the fairy frostwork on the pane. 

[169] 



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And yetj if one were to choose where no choice 
is needful, one might hazard the guess that the 
hearts of future readers are more likely, as the 
years go by, to be turned toward the few poems 
in which Aldrich has deepened the wistful 
beauty of his lines by thoughts of the mysteries 
which encompass us. Whether he pondered 
often upon such themes one cannot tell, but one 
likes to think of him, at the last, as sustained 
by the noble mood in which he composed his 
final sonnet: — 

I vex me not with brooding on the years 

That were ere I drew breath: why should I then 

Distrust the darkness that may fall again 

When life is done ? Perchance in other spheres — 

Dead planets — I once tasted mortal tears. 

And walked as now amid a throng of men. 

Pondering things that lay beyond my ken. 

Questioning death, and solacing my fears. 

Ofttimes indeed strange sense have I of this. 

Vague memories that hold me with a spell. 

Touches of unseen lips upon my brow. 

Breathing some incommunicable bliss ! 

In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well ? 

Still lovelier life awaits thee. Fear not thou ! 



Whittier for To-day 



Whittier for To-day 



AVhittier was born in 1807, the year of By- 
ron*s "Hours of Idleness." During the year 
following, the English army in the Peninsular 
War, allied with the forces of Spain and Portu- 
gal, made what the poet Wordsworth felt to 
be a shameful treaty with the French. In his 
pamphlet against this Convention of Cintra, 
Wordsworth justified, with passionate elo- 
quence, the right of noble-minded men to as- 
sert themselves in times of moral tumult and 
confused political aims. He pictured the hu- 
man soul " breaking down limit, and losing and 
forgetting herself in the sensation and image of 
Country and the human race." In such crises, 
he declared, the emotions transcend the imme- 
diate object which excites them. War, terrible 
in its naked cruelty, yet "attracting the more 
benign by the accompaniment of some shadow 
which seems to sanctify it ; the senseless weav- 

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ing and Interweaving of factions — vanishing 
and reviving and piercing each other like the 
Northern Lights; public commotions, and 
those in the breast of the individual; . . .these 
demonstrate that the passions of men (I mean 
the soul of sensibility in the heart of man) do 
immeasurably transcend their objects. The true 
sorrow of humanity consists in this : not that 
the mind of man fails, but that the course and 
demands of action and of life so rarely corre- 
spond with the dignity and intensity of human 
desires.'* 

Clouded as these words are with excess of 
feeling, few passages could suggest more vividly 
one function which Whittier*s poetry was to 
fulfill. Gifted with far less genius than either 
Wordsworth or Byron, Whittier nevertheless 
felt "public commotions" as profoundly as 
did either of the EngHsh poets. He guided the 
passionate feeling of his faction and party more 
definitely than they, and to a more successful 
issue. The "demands of action*' matched the 
intensity of his desires. Confronting a specific 
phase of the old question of human liberty, — 
a question which faces every poet who reflects 
upon man In his social relations, — Whittier 

[ 174] 



Whittier for To-day 

grew from a mere facile rhymester into a master 
of political poetry. During the thirty years that 
ended with the close of the Civil War, no 
poetic voice in America was so potent as Whit- 
tier's in evoking and embodying the humani- 
tarian spirit. 

He continued to compose verse for nearly 
thirty years after the conflict over Slavery had 
been settled, and these later poems contributed 
largely to his popularity. But his mind was 
formed, his imagination kindled, and his hand 
perfected, amid the fiery pressure of events. 
He voiced not only those voiceless generations 
of pioneers from which he sprang, but also the 
dumb passion of sympathy, of indignation, of 
loyalty, which vv^as to swing vast armies of com- 
mon men into march and battle. It was a curi- 
ous destiny for the Quaker lad. Frail of body, 
timid, poor, untaught, he had discovered on 
reading Burns that he, too, had a poet's soul. 
He learned from William Lloyd Garrison the 
secret of losing one's life and saving it, so that 
in becoming — in his own words — "a man 
and not a mere verse-maker" he found in that 
surrender to the claims of humanity the inspi- 
ration which transformed him into a poet. 

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Will our people continue to read him ? At 
the death of Tennyson, which fell in the same 
yearasWhittier's (1892), a decorous little com- 
pany gathered in an American college town to 
read and discuss some of the Laureate's poetry. 
It was a grave and wholly edifying occasion. 
One of the company was a lawyer, then far ad- 
vanced in age, of the highest professional stand- 
ing, and the senior warden of his church. When 
the programme was completed and the ice 
cream was imminent, the stately old lawyer drew 
me cautiously behind a door. 

"Do you really enjoy Tennyson?" he de- 
manded. 

"Yes," said I, in some surprise. "Don't 
you ? " 

" No ! " he exclaimed. " It has too many in- 
volutions and convolutions for me. I don't 
like it. Did you ever read Byron's ^ Marino 
Faliero'?" 

" I was reading it only yesterday," said I. 

The senior warden's eye kindled with sud- 
den fire. "Well, that's the kind of poetry / 
like : where the old man stands up and gives 'em 
hell I'' And with a friendly wink at me — a 
reader of the poet of his boyhood — the old 

[ 176] 



Whittier for To-day 

gentleman blandly joined one of the groups of 
ladies who were still talking about 

*' laborious Orient ivory '* 

and 

** the mellow ouzel fluting in the elm." 

No coiner of literary phrases could have con- 
veyed so effectively the nature of the spell once 
cast over readers by Byron's passionate decla- 
mation. The harangues of Faliero and Man- 
fred and Cain are, if one pleases, rebeFs rhetoric 
rather than poetry, speech instead of song. Yet 
they moved men once as no one is moved 
to-day by any living writer of verse. Whittier 
shared with Byron the faculty of forging at 
white heat such stanzas as were instantly ac- 
cepted as poetry. A later age is inclined to 
classify them as pamphleteering or as oratory. 
Lowell writes to Whittier to "cry aloud and 
spare not against the accursed Texas plot," and 
Whittier straightway composes his "Texas " : 

Up the hillside, down the glen. 
Rouse the sleeping citizen ; 
Summon out the might of men! 

Aside from its use of metre and rhyme, it might 

be one of Lowell's own anti-slavery editorials. 

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Park-Street Papers 

Whittier's stout-hearted sea-captain, who de- 
clares : — 

** Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish 

gold. 
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of the hold. 
By the living God who made me ! — I would sooner in your 

bay 
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away! *' 

Is scarcely distinguishable from Garrison as- 
severating : — 

" I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I 
will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch 
— and I will be heardy Both are honest men, 
aflame with righteous indignation ; neither is a 
poet. Just as Elliott's "Corn Law Rhymes" 
are often but a metrical version of the speeches 
of Cobden and Bright, soWhittier's anti-slavery 
verse is sometimes but a rhythmical rearrange- 
ment of matter that would have served equally 
well for a peroration by Wendell Phillips or a 
leader by Horace Greeley. The aim of them 
all was to inform, to explain, to call to action ; 
and a half-century after the action is over, 
the rhymes, like the speech and the article, are 
likely to share the pamphlet's fate. All have 
served their hour. 

C 178 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

Many of Whittier's political poems, however, 
refuse to be disposed of thus easily. Their ma- 
terial still seems to be the stuff from which en- 
during poetry is wrought. Defects ofworkman- 
ship miay mar their surface, but the imaginative 
fabric is essentially unimpaired. The force of 
his ideas and sentiments far outweighs the de- 
ficiencies in technical craftsmanship. His anti- 
slavery poetry is based upon certain convictions, 
familiar enough to all who know the facts of 
Whittier's life. He inherited a love of freedom 
as an abstract notion — "the faith in which my 
father stood" — and a corresponding hatred 
of kingcraft and priestcraft. The movement for 
abolition in England and America seemed to 
him, as to his father, a legitimate consequence 
of the principles which had triumphed in the 
French Revolution. He was endowed with 
warm human feeling. His loyalty to the bonds 
of family, neighborhood, and state was absolute, 
and he merged this loyalty, without impairing 
it, into what Wordsworth called "the sensation 
and image of Country and the human race." 

Add to this poetic capital an intimate know- 
ledge of the men of his section, a shrewd politi- 
cal eye for the currents of public opinion, a com- 

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mand of simple, racy, fervent speech, the self- 
possession of a Quaker and" come-outer," and 
a high courageous heart, — and you have an 
almost ideal image of a poet armed and ready 
in a noble cause. 

To appreciate Whittier's moral courage is 
difficult without a precise knowledge ofthe sort 
of ostracism which he faced. A physician in 
Washington, Dr. Crandall, languished in prison 
until he contracted a fatal illness, under sen- 
tence for the misdemeanor of reading a bor- 
rowed copy of Whittier's pamphlet " Justice 
and Expediency." No anarchist to-day is a 
more "unsafe" person in the eyes of respect- 
able society than were the Abolitionists. Your 

Solid man of Boston; 
A comfortable man, with dividends. 
And the first salmon, and the first green peas, 

was irritated by Whittier then as he is irritated 
by Gorky to-day. 

In the eyes ofthe typical commercial circles 
of Massachusetts, Whittier was for twenty years 
an agitator and therefore an outcast. The idol 
of that society was Daniel Webster; and Whit- 
tier, with a scorn and sorrow all the more ter- 
[ i8o ] 



Whittier for To-day 

rible for Its recognition of Webster's high pow- 
ers, described him in 1850 as an Ichabod: — 

from those great eyes 
The soul has fled: 
When faith is lost, when honor dies. 
The man is dead! 

A year later, in the poem to Kossuth, Web- 
ster's glorious voice — 

designed 
The bugle-march of Liberty to wind — 

becomes merely 

the hoarse note of the bloodhound's baying. 
The wolPs long howl behind the bondman's flight. 

Years afterward, it is true, in one of the most 
touching of his poems, Whittier mourns that 
Webster's august head was laid wearily down, — 

Too soon for us, too soon for thee. 
Beside thy lonely Northern sea. 

But in the Titan's lifetime Whittler's words 
were those of stern and sorrowful rebuke. 

Nor did the social forces which supported 
Webster fare better In Whittler's day of wrath. 
In his "Stanzas for the Times" (1835) ^"^ 
« Moloch In State Street," the 
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ancient sacrifice 
Of Man to Gain 

is denounced with prophetic sternness. In "The 
Pine Tree'* the conventional arguments of the 
solid citizens of Boston are tossed aside as if 
the old, reckless " ^a ira " wind were blowing. 
The tune is, — 

Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's latest 
pound. 

It is, — 

Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler 

cries; 
Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling 

stocks may rise? 

A Trust Company in Greater Boston chose 
for its advertising motto, not long ago, the 
phrase: " Banking, the Foundation of Govern- 
ment." Whittier would have smiled at that 
placard with grim Jacobinical disdain. 

Equally revolutionary was his attack upon 
the clergy. Crosier and crown, to him, were 
"twin-born vampires." Chief-priests and rulers 
were conniving with each other, as of old. In 
"Clerical Oppressors" Whittier cried, — 

Woe to the priesthood! woe 
To those whose hire is with the price of blood; 

C 182 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go. 
The searching truths of God ! 

With bitter sarcasm in " The Pastoral Let- 
ter/' with stinging invective in "The Christian 
Slave" and "The Sentence of John L. Brown," 
Whittier scourged the clerical upholders of the 
"divine institution." Finally, in "A Sabbath 
Scene," when the parson returns thanks to God 
for the capture of the fugitive slave girl, the 
poet can endure no more: — 

My brain took fire: "Is this," I cried, 
"The end of prayer and preaching? 
Then down with pulpit, down with priest. 
And give us Nature's teaching! " 

This is the unadulterated doctrine of 1789. 
Pennsylvania Hall, the ill-starred Abolitionist 
headquarters in Philadelphia, is transformed in 
Whittier's imagination into the one 

Temple sacred to the Rights of Man. 

One is curious to know how many of the suc- 
cessors of the clergymen whom Whittier held 
up to obloquy read out his hymns to-day with 
any suspicion of the agony of soul, the despair 
for the priesthood and the church, in which 
many of those hymns were written. 

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It is needless to multiply illustrations of 
Whittier's attitude toward the specific issue of 
American slavery. To his mind this particular 
battle was but one phase of the long humani- 
tarian campaign against world-wide injustice. 
Through the electric currents of his verse the 
better aspirations of the eighteenth century and 
even the phrases and the passions of European 
Revolution were brought into contact with the 
American conscience. But he was far more than 
what he modestly described himself as being, a 

mere 

Weapon in the war with wrong. 

History and legend of Indian and colonist, 
songs of homely labor, pictures of the Merri- 
mac country-side, bits of foreign lore and fancy, 
— all these alternate in Whittier*s verse with 
elegies over dead Abolitionists and stern sum- 
monses to action. He read a great variety of 
books and kept in close touch with the move- 
ments of European politics. Although he never 
went abroad, the names of Garibaldi, Thiers, 
or Pius IX suggested to him themes for poems 
as readily as did the personality of his friends 
Fields and Sumner. He could turn out a Brown- 
ingesque piece like "From Perugia," without 

[ 184] 



Whittier for To-day 

betraying the fact that he had never set foot 
in Italy. His was not merely a home-keeping 
mind or heart. Garrison's motto for the " Liber- 
ator": "Our country is the world — our coun- 
trymen are mankind," spoke a sentiment which 
permeates all of Whittier's verse like light. It 
sustained him when the American outlook grew 
dark; it sweetened and broadened his spirit. 
From the later forties to the close of the Civil 
War, it is instructive as well as pleasant to ob- 
serve how many of his poetic themes are de- 
tached from the immediate emotions of the 
hour. More and more he emerged from the at- 
mosphere of faction and section. Even his poems 
prompted by the war itself, like " Barbara Friet- 
chie" and "Laus Deo," breathe a spirit of nation- 
ality and not of partisanship. The struggle had 
scarcely ceased when he wrote "Snow-Bound," 
an idyllic composition which was instantly and 
truly interpreted as an intimate revelation of 
Whittier*s real nature. He was almost sixty 
when it appeared, and for the rest of his long life 
he was known to his countrymen as the author 
of "Snow-Bound." The old homestead at East 
Haverhill is now visited by thousands of pil- 
grims who are more anxious to see "the clean- 

C 185] 



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winged hearth" and the stepping-stones by the 
brook than they are to rake the ashes from the 
old fires of the AboHtion controversy. 

So he grew old, a plain figure of a man, shrewd, 
gentle, loving the talk of gracious women, lov- 
ing his summer glimpses of mountain and shore, 
and yet essentially lonely. He used to sit in the 
little back room of the Amesbury House, over 
a sheet-iron stove, and glance now at a photo- 
graph of the bust of Marcus Aurelius and now at 
the florid face of Henry Ward Beecher,on the 
opposite wall, — saying playfully that he was a 
sort of compromise between the two. The stoic 
was in his blood, certainly, and there was some- 
thing, too, of the sentimentalist and the agita- 
tor. New Englanders, and especially the trans- 
planted New Englanders of the West, loved 
him to the last, knowing him as only kinsmen 
can know one another. The rest of the country 
respected him for the uprightness of his long 
career, for his courage in the dark days, and for 
the fame which his verse had won. He died, at 
the great age of eighty-five,only fifteen years ago. 

Only fifteen years, yet in the flux and change 
of our national life during that interval, Whittier 
[ i86] 



Whittier for To-day 

seems already as far away as Longfellow, who 
died ten years earlier. Even Hawthorne, who 
died in 1864, is scarcely, as a personal figure, 
more remote. It was as a neighborhood poet that 
Whittier began his career, — a rural prodigy 
who without schooling could make such rhymes 
as pleased the ear of Newburyport and Haver- 
hill. He continued throughout his life to pro- 
duce the sort of verse which appealed, first of 
all, to his neighbors. But even the most casual 
visitor to Whittier- Land to-day is struck by the 
change in the poet's audience. Here and there, 
and notably between the Whittier homestead 
and Amesbury,the ancient farms remain intact. 
Some of them are owned, as in Whittier's youth, 
by Quakers. As one drives along the elm-shaded 
roads, there may still be seen in a fewdooryards 
the little weather-stained shops for home shoe- 
making, with flower-gardens around them, and 
perhaps, at the window, a gray head bent over 
the bench, finishing some fine hand-work that 
will be taken to Haverhill to-morrow. But these 
old men — the men for whom Whittier wrote — 
are dying. Machine-work and foreign "help" 
— as they still say in Essex County — are mak- 
ing the old native industries superfluous. Along 

[187] 



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the lines of the electric cars are new dwellings, 
ugly to the eye, and rented by French Canadians, 
Poles, Italians, Greeks. What should these im- 
migrants know or care for the "pines on Ra- 
moth Hill," though Ramoth Hill, under an- 
other name, be only over their shoulder? Their 
children will read "Maud Muller'' and "Bar- 
bara Frietchie" in school, but even they will 
need an annotated edition of "Snow-Bound" 
to tell them why a hearth should be "winged" 
and what " pendent trammels " are, and "Turk's 
head" andirons. 

Read the editorials which Whittier was writ- 
ing in 1844 for the mill-folk of Lowell, — an 
educated, thrifty, ambitious class, — and then 
walk along the streets of Lowell and Lawrence 
to-day, in the endeavor to find a native New 
England face. They have almost disappeared. 
Massachusetts, which reckoned about one-fifth 
of her population as foreign-born or children of 
foreign-born in 1857, — when Whittier began 
to write for the Atlantic, — now finds this class 
of her citizens in the majority. To the men and 
womenforwhom Whittier wrote, the Boston of 
to-day would be a city of aliens. Only thirty-two 
percent of its population is Protestant. No im- 

[ 188 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

agination can picture the laboring men of New 
England sitting down to read Whittier's " Songs 
of Labor." The very tools have changed, and 
the spirit of Whittier'sDrovers and Shoemakers 
and Lumbermen is incomprehensible to their 
successors. It is too late — and too foolish — to 
raise any Know-Nothing alarm. Far better these 
immigrants, as raw material for Democracy's 
wholesome task, than that exhausted strain of 
Puritan stock which lives querulously in the 
cities or grows vile in the hill-towns. It is no 
worse for Boston to be misgoverned by a clever 
Irishman than by some inefficient Brahmin of 
the Back Bay. But whether these changes in the 
population are welcomed or deplored, the fact 
is obvious that the local public upon which 
Whittier's poetry depended for its immediate 
audience has altered beyond recognition. 

What is true of New England is true to a 
greater or less degree of the whole country. New 
men, new habits, new political notions, are in the 
saddle. That New England should have lost 
whatever ascendency she once possessed is not 
a matter of prime importance. That the country 
no longer looks to her for political or literary 
leadership is due to many causes which have no- 

C 189] 



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thing to do with Whittier. And nevertheless, 
his life and his poetry were so intimately identi- 
fied with his section, that its loss of prestige in 
the nation affects the present assessment of 
Whittier's significance. 

One must admit that from some points of 
view he remains, what he was at the beginning, 
— a "local" poet. In spite of the clear resonance 
with which he now and again struck the note of 
nationality, and in spite of his cosmopolitan curi- 
osity about the world at large, — a curiosity felt, 
for that matter, by many an Essex County sea- 
faring man of the vanished type, — Whittier 
never lost a sort of rusticity. One may like him 
all the better for it. Itgoes with his role, Hke the 
rusticity of Burns. Yet it seems now, as Burns^s 
provincialism does not, to narrow the range of 
his influence as a poet. 

Whittier was limited, too, in his physical ca- 
pacity to perceive beauty and in his artistic power 
to interpret it. Color-blind and tune-deaf as he 
was, knowing no full and rich life of the body, 
his poetry is deficient in sensuous charm. Its 
passion is a moral passion only. With a natural 
facility in metre and rhyme, his workmanship 
betrayed throughout his career a carelessness for 

[ 190 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

literature as an art. His rhymes were often mere 
improvised approximations. In one poem alone 
he rhymes "God" with "abode," "word" and 
"record." From the hundreds of still uncollected 
poems which he scrawled in youth, down to the 
jocose doggerel- — never intended for publica- 
tion — with which his old age sometimes relaxed 
itself, Whittier exhibited little delicacy of ear, 
little reverence for that instrument of verse on 
which he had learned to play without a teacher. 
He cared intensely for the feelings communi- 
cated by the art of poetry, but he expressed more 
than once in his letters a kind of contempt for 
craftsmanship, for "literary reputation." 

Even in that field of moral ideas where his 
strength lay, his path was likewise narrow. Stern- 
ly, and as it proved victoriously, he brought the 
teachings of the Old and New Testaments, as 
freely interpreted by his own Quaker sect, to 
bear upon the problems of the hour. His power 
as a moral teacher was in the veracity and bold- 
ness with which he could utter "Thus saith the 
Lord." He had no new message of his own. He 
did not even restate the enduring verities in dif- 
ferent terms. He never attempted, like Words- 
worth, a fresh philosophical grasp upon the 

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Park-Street Papers 

frame of things. Like most of the prophets and 
saints, he took the accepted moralities, the fa- 
miliar religious formulas of his day, and through 
his own fervor breathed into them life and pas- 
sion. But he creates no novel world for the spirit 
of man; he opens no undreamed horizons to the 
imagination. 

We must fall back upon Whittier's gift of 
fiery and tender speech. It is the case, after 
all, of a Marino Faliero, of an old man elo- 
quent. And this is precisely what one would 
like to know : does Whittier to-day, fifty years 
after the full maturing of his powers, and fifteen 
years after his death, either compel or persuade 
his countrymen to listen to him? 

It is easier to ask this question than to an- 
swer it. Our people as a whole respond quickly 
to personal leadership. They have an immense 
latent capacity for moral and political enthu- 
siasm. But there is no master voice in the 
world of letters to which the American people 
are now listening. In Whittier's early man- 
hood he set himself deliberately to learn the 
principles of true liberty from the prose of 
Milton and of Burke. There are few greater 
[ 192 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

names in our literature than these. But aside 
from the perfunctory reading of extracts for 
school and college examinations, who is read- 
ing Milton and Burke to-day? Who is reading 
Byron and Shelley, poets of emancipation, kin 
to Whittier by many bonds of sympathy, and 
far transcending him in poetic variety, power, 
and beauty? The mind of the American peo- 
ple is occupied with other concerns. For that 
matter, there is not a single living poet, in any 
country of the globe, who is generally recog- 
nized as a commanding voice. Tennyson was 
the last. That others will arise in due time no 
one who knows the history of humanity can 
doubt. But they have not yet come. 

Meantime our own people, at least, no 
longer look to the poets — as they certainly did 
in other days — for inspiration and guidance 
in the performance of public duty. Whittier's 
" Massachusetts to Virginia," Lowell's " The 
Present Crisis," Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn 
of the Republic," unquestionably did influence 
the emotions and the will of milHons of Amer- 
icans. That any political verse would to-day 
affect our public policy is very doubtful. A 
single illustration may serve. In 1900, when 

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Park-Street Papers 

the question of forcible retention of the Phil- 
ippines was still a debated one, and consider- 
ations of national duty, self-interest, and pride 
were struggling together in the public mind, 
Mr. William Vaughn Moody published his 
"Ode in Time of Hesitation." Many critics 
of poetry hailed it as the finest political poem 
produced in this country since Lowell's " Com- 
memoration Ode." Yet noble in thought and 
masterly in execution though it was, it may be 
doubted whether Mr. Moody's poem affected 
the mind of the nation in the slightest degree ; 
and it would be interesting to know whether 
one spectator in a thousand of Mr. Moody's 
play, " The Great Divide," has ever even heard 
of the "Ode in Time of Hesitation." 

But the mere fact that political poets are 
quoted below par to-day — if they may fairly 
be said to be quoted at all — does not prove 
that the pubHc is justified in its indifference, 
or that the poets are in the wrong. On the 
contrary, it happens that upon at least two 
of the issues immediately before the American 
people Whittier's verse takes radical and un- 
compromising ground, and that upon both of 
these issues one may safely venture the asser- 

[ 194 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

tion that Whittier is absolutely and everlast- 
ingly right. 

The race-question is the first. Not, of course, 
the old issue of Slavery. Not the wisdom or 
unwisdom of that hasty Reconstruction legis- 
lation, in which partisan advantage was inex- 
tricably confused with the ideal interest of 
former slaves. The race-question transcends 
any academic inquiry as to what ought to have 
been done in 1866. It affects the North as well 
as the South, it touches the daily life of all of 
our citizens, individually, politically, humanly. 
It moulds the child's conception of democracy. 
It tests the faith of the adult. It is by no means 
an American problem only. The relation of 
the white with the yellow and black races is an 
urgent question all around the globe. The pre- 
sent unrest in India, the wars in Africa, the 
struggle between Japan and Russia, the national 
reconstruction of China, the sensitiveness of 
both Canadian and Californian to Oriental im- 
migration, are impressive signs that the adjust- 
ment of race-differences is the greatest humani- 
tarian task now confronting the world. What 
is going on in our States, North and South, is 
only a local phase of a world problem. 

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Now, Whittier's opinions upon that world- 
problem are unmistakable. He believed, quite 
literally, that all men are brothers ; that op- 
pression of one man or one race degrades the 
whole human family ; and that there should be 
the fullest equality of opportunity. That a 
mere difference in color should close the door 
of civil, industrial, and political hope upon any 
individual was a hateful thing to the Quaker 
poet. The whole body of his verse is a pro- 
test against the assertion of race pride, against 
the emphasis upon racial differences. To 
Whittier there was no such thing as a "white 
man's civilization." The only distinction was 
between civilization and barbarism. He had 
faith in education, in equality before the law, 
in freedom of opportunity, and in the ultimate 
triumph of brotherhood. 

They are rising, — 

All are rising. 

The black and white together ! 

This faith is at once too sentimental and too 
dogmatic to suit those persons who have exalted 
economic efficiency into a fetish and who have 
talked loudly at times — though rather less 
loudly since the Russo-Japanese war — about 

[ 196] 



Whittier for To-day 

the white man's task of governing the back- 
ward races. But whatever progress has been 
made by the American negro, since the Civil 
War, in self-respect, in moral and intellectual 
development, and — for that matter — in eco- 
nomic efficiency, has been due to fidelity to 
those principles which Whittier and other like- 
minded men and women long ago enunciated. 
The immense tasks which still remain, alike for 
" higher " and for " lower " races, can be worked 
out by following Whittier's programme, if they 
can be worked out at all. 

The second of the immediate issues upon 
which Whittier's voice is clear is that of inter- 
national peace. Though the burdens of mili- 
tarism were far less apparent in the middle of 
the last century than they are to-day, and the 
necessity of allaying race-conflicts by peaceful 
means was less instant than now, Whittier be- 
longed to the little band of agitators for peace. 
He did not make war against war so vocifer- 
ously and tactlessly as some of his later breth- 
ren in the same cause. But he faced the 
question with perfect clearness of conviction. 
The good people who were dissatisfied with 
the meagre results of the Hague Conference 

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Park-Street Papers 

of 1907 had better read Whittier's lines on 
" The Peace Convention at Brussels " (1848). 
Then, as now, there were faithless critics — 
With sneering lip, and wise world-knowing eyes — 

to point out the folly of this dream of dis- 
armament ; the impossibility of persuading the 
nations to leave the bloody 

Sport of Presidents and Kings 
in order 

To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames 
For tea and gossip, like old country dames. 

According to these critics, as Whittier repre- 
sents them, the delegates to the Convention of 
1848, such as Cobden and Sturge and Elihu 
Burritt, are merely " cravens " who " plead 
the weakling's cant." But Kaisers cannot be 
checked by resolutions; guns cannot be spiked 
with texts of Scripture ; " Might alone is 
Right." 

So, at least, assert the skeptics, whose case 
is put by Whittier, much as Lincoln used to 
put the case for his opponents at the bar, much 
more skillfully than they could do it for them- 
selves. And thereupon, taking refuge in that 
hinterland of religious mysticism whither his 

[ 198 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

spirit was wont to escape when hard pressed, 
Whittier foretells, in assured vision, the day 
when there shall yet be peace on earth. Ulti- 
mate international good-will is to him 

The great hope resting on the truth of God. 

But it rests, and does not waver. 

Time has already done much to justify his 
faith. To compare the conditions under which 
the Convention of Brussels met in 1848 with 
the widely organized efforts, and the very tan- 
gible progress, which the workers for interna- 
tional peace have made since 1899, is to become 
aware how much the sentiment of the civil- 
ized world has changed upon this subject. The 
"faithful few" who journeyed to Brussels at 
their own charges and upon their own initia- 
tive have become the duly accredited repre- 
sentatives of forty-four powers, covering the 
territory of the globe. The Hague Conference 
was the first real world-assembly, and its work 
was necessarily confused and hampered. But 
these professional diplomatists, warriors, and 
lawyers who met at The Hague are not in ad- 
vance of, and many of them are far behind, the 
sentiment of the common people of their re- 

[ 199 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

spective countries. The popular dissatisfaction 
with the concrete results of the Conference is 
the best proof of the progress of the cause with 
which Whittier was identified. 

After all, then, and in spite of every limita- 
tion, Whittier^s verse does penetrate to the es- 
sential concerns of humanity. If Goethe's fa- 
mous lines are true, and only those who have 
eaten their bread in tears have learned to know 
the heavenly powers, then Whittier was an in- 
itiate. He knew what it meant to toil, to re- 
nounce, to cherish unfulfilled but indefeasible 
dreams. That note of tenderness which Long- 
fellow found and loved in mediaeval literature 
was native to the author of "The Pennsylva- 
nia Pilgrim." Save for their lack of creed and 
formula, Whittier's hymns might have been 
composed in the thirteenth century, so utterly 
simple is their faith. He believed that "altar, 
church, priest and ritual will pass away"; yet 
his hymns, like those of many another former 
heretic and iconoclast, are sung to-day in all 
the churches. Mr. Pickard notes that in a col- 
lection of sixty-six hymns made for the use of 
the World's Parliament of Religions in 1893, 
nine were from Whittier, a larger number than 
[ 200 ] 



Whittier for To-day 

from any other poet. In his early editorials he 
made effective use of the current conventional 
religious vocabulary, but for his hymns he chose 
the simple language of the followers of the In- 
ner Light, unfreighted with the old burdens of 
dogmatism. Here again Time has been on the 
poet's sideband Whittier's verse has cooperated 
with the very general tendency to cast off dog- 
matic trammels and the worn conventionalities 
of religious expression. It would not be strange 
if his ultimate influence were to be that of a 
mystic. Controversy made him a poet, and his 
pictures of hearth and home and country-side 
confirmed his fame; his human sympathy still 
brings his verse into touch with vital political 
and social issues; but his abiding claim upon 
the remembrance of his countrymen may yet 
be found to lie in the wistful tenderness, the 
childlike simplicity, with which he turned to 
the other world. 



The Editor who was 
never the editor 



The Editor who was never 
the Editor 

Upon the wall of the Atlantic oiHce, among 
the portraits of former editors, there may be seen 
a fine open face, with striking eyes and a beard 
worn longer than is now the fashion. It is a fair 
likeness of Francis H. Underwood, the pro- 
jector of the magazine. At least four years be- 
fore the Atlantic came into being, he originated 
the plan, engaged the contributors, and but for 
the failure ofa publisher would have enjoyed the 
full credit of the enterprise. When the magazine 
was finally launched, in 1857, Underwood was 
still the initiating spirit. It was he who pleaded 
with the reluctant head of the firm of Phillips, 
Sampson & Co. As "our Hterary man," in Mr. 
Phillips's comfortable proprietary phrase, he 
sat at the foot of the table among the guests at 
that well-known dinner where the project of the 
[ 205 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

magazine was first made public. He visited 
England to secure the services of the first Brit- 
ish contributors. Recognizing that Lowell's 
name was of the highest importance to the suc- 
cess of the new venture. Underwood loyally- 
accepted the position of "office editor," as as- 
sistant to his more gifted friend. When the 
breaking up of the firm of Phillips, Sampson 
& Co., in 1859, threw the ownership of the 
magazine into the hands of Ticknorand Fields, 
Underwood went out of office, as did Lowell in 
due time. He had thereafter a varied and honor- 
able, although a somewhat disappointed career, 
which has already been sketched in the Atlan- 
tic ' by the sympathetic pen of J. T. Trow- 
bridge. 

A graceful writer, and a warm-hearted, en- 
thusiastic associate of men more brilliant than 
himself,Underwood's name is already shadowed 
by that forgetfulness which awaits the second- 
rate men of a generation rich in creative energy. 
For it must be admitted that his ability was not 
of the first order ; as the slang of the athlete has 
it, he never quite " made the team." But he 
played the literary game devotedly, honestly, 
* "The Author oi Quabbin,^' January, 1895. 
[ 206 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

and always against better men ; he became, in 
short, a model of the "scrub" player. The 
scrubs, as every one knows, get a good dmner 
at the end of the season, Hsten to the thanks 
of the coaches, and then are straightway for- 
gotten. 

Underwood, however, gave alms to oblivion 
by several useful volumes, and by keeping an 
extraordinary scrap-book.^ In two huge leather- 
backed volumes are pasted hundreds upon hun- 
dreds of letters received during his forty years 
of correspondence with many of the foremost 
American and English writing men. There are 
a dozen or more from Lowell, many from 
Emerson, nearly forty from Holmes, and about 
fifty from Whittier. The letters are arranged 
alphabetically,andrunfromAlcottandAllibone 

to Robert C. Winthrop and Elizur Wright ; and 
in point of time they range from Richard H. 
Dana the elder, who helped found "The North 
American Review" ini8i5, downto authors 
who are still struggling. Many of these letters 
throw light upon the unwritten history of the 
Atlantic, besides illustrating the literary con- 
' Kindly loaned to me by its present owner, George F. 
Babbitt of Boston. 

C 207 ] 



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ditions which prevailed in this country during 
Underwood*s life. One of the earliest letters, 
for example, is from N. P. Willis, then a name 
of first rank in the literary profession. Under- 
wood, who was born in Enfield, Massachusetts, 
in 1825, had left Amherst College without 
graduating, had gone to Kentucky, taught 
school, studied law, and married. But he yearned 
for a literary career, and sent specimens of his 
poetry to Mr. Willis, who was then in Wash- 
ington. The veteran's reply is interesting, and 
his bland phrase, " Your poetry is as good as 
Byron's was at the same stage of progress," 
betrays both a kind heart and a long editorial 
experience. 

Washington, April 29 [about 1 848] . 

My dear Sir, — Your letter forwarded to me 
here is just received, and I hasten to comply 
with your request, tho' young poets ask advice 
very much as lovers do after they are irrevocably 
engaged. In the first place, however, I should 
always advise against adopting the literary pro- 
fession, for at the best, it is like making waggon- 
traces of your hair — wholly insufficient for 
wants which increase as the power gives way. 
Your poetry is as good as Byron's was at the 
[ 208 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

same stage of progress — correct, and evidently 
inspired, and capable of expansion into stuff for 
fame. But there are many men of the same 
calibre who would go on, and starve up to the 
empty honor of being remembered (first) when 
dead, were it not that they could turn their more 
common powers to account, and live by meaner 
industry. Poetry is an angel in your breast, and 
you had better not turn her out to be your maid- 
of-all-work. As to writing for magazines, that is 
very nearly done with as a matter of profit. The 
competition for notoriety alone gives the editors 
more than they can use. You could not j^//a piece 
of poetry now in America. The literary avenues 
are all overcrowded, and you cannot live by the 
pen except as a drudge to a newspaper. Not- 
withstanding all this, you will probably try it, 
and all I can say is, — that you shall have my 
sympathy and what aid I can give you. If you 
should come to New York and will call on me, 
I shall be happy to say more than I have time to 
write. Yours very truly, 

N. P. Willis. 

Underwood's sojourn in Kentucky increased 
his native hatred of slavery, and upon his return 
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Park-Street Papers 

to Massachusetts in 1850 he enlisted in the 
Free-Soil movement. In 1852 he was appointed 
Clerk of the State Senate, Henry Wilson being 
its President. His acquaintance with public 
men grew rapidly, and by 1853, when he was 
but twenty-eight, he conceived the notion of 
a new magazine. Some such project had long 
been in the air, as is evident from the letters of 
Emerson, Alcott, and Lowell, but Underwood 
was the first to crystallize it. It was to be anti- 
slavery in politics, but was to draw for general 
contributions upon the best writers of the coun- 
try. He succeeded in interesting J. P. Jewett, 
who had undertaken the publication of "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin" after the over-cautious Phillips 
had rejected it, and who was also the publisher 
ofWhittier's poems. With characteristic eager- 
ness Underwood then wrote to desirable con- 
tributors, sketching the proposed magazine, 
and soliciting their cooperation. In selecting 
some of the letters received in reply, the anti- 
slavery men shall be heard first. Wendell Phil- 
lips was dubious : — 

Lynn, Aug. 4th [1853]. 
Dear Friend, — I have given your idea the 
best consideration in my power, and am obliged 

C 210 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

to come to a different conclusion from Messrs. 
May and Garrison. I believe the plan has been 
tried thrice within my time (I mean my anti- 
slavery life) and has each time failed. I cannot 
think, therefore, there is much chance for the 
periodical sketched in your excellent letter. At 
the same time I am aware my judgment on such 
a point is worth little ; and that an experiment so 
useful to the general cause of Reform may not 
be lost, if practicable, I have enclosed your let- 
ter, with a few lines, to Theodore Parker, asking 
him to communicate to you his mature opinion 
on the subject. 

Believe me very truly yours, 

Wendell Phillips. 
Mr. F. H. Underwood. 

Theodore Parker was no more encourag- 
ing:— 

Boston, ii Oct., 1853. 

My dear Sir, — The more I think of your 
enterprise the less likely it seems to me to suc- 
ceed at present. You know how the " Com- 
monwealth" struggled along, paying nothing 
and hardly enabling Mr. Wright to live. I fear 
this undertaking would meet with the same fate 
[211 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

— at first. Of its ultimate triumph I have little 
doubt. I laid the matter before the gentlemen 
I spoke of Sunday night, and that seemed to be 
their opinion. 

Mr. Phillips and Dr. Howe know much more 
about such things than I do, and their opinion 
would be better than mine. I am sorry to seem 
to pour cold water on your scheme, for I should 
be glad to see it succeed — and to help it for- 
ward if possible. 

Yours faithfully, 

Theo. Parker. 
Mr. Underwood. 

John G. Palfrey thought better of the idea, 
although in the first of the two letters to be 
quoted, he speaks of the new periodical as "a 
weekly newspaper." The second letter shows 
a clearer understanding of the project. 

Cambridge, Oct. lo, 1853. 
My dear Sir, — I have with great pleasure 
heard from you of your project of a weekly 
newspaper, to be devoted to the exposition and 
defence of anti-slavery principles. I believe that 
there is an opening for a paper of this descrip- 
tion, and I have full confidence in your ability, 
[ 212 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

and that of your proposed coadjutor, to con- 
duct it to the acceptance and advantage of the 
public. 

With great regard, I am. 

Dear Sir, your friend and servant, 

John G. Palfrey. 

Cambridge, Nov. 22, 1853. 
My dear Sir, — I am much gratified to hear 
that there is a prospect of a speedy accom- 
plishment of your plan of a literary and anti- 
slavery Monthly Magazine. I shall be very 
happy to contribute to the work whenever it is 
in my power. I have little hope, however, of 
doing so this winter, my time being pretty 
strictly appropriated till next May. 
With great regard, I am. 

Dear Sir, your friend and servant, 

John G. Palfrey. 

James Freeman Clarke was also optimistic : — 

Boston, November 23, 1853. 
My dear Sir, — I received yesterday your 
favor of the 21st, in reference to the new Maga- 
zine about to be published by J. P. Jewett & 
Co. The plan appears to me an excellent one, 
and I am especially glad that it is to be started 
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Park-Street Papers 

by Publishers whose business energy will place 
the publication part on such a basis as will, I 
trust, ensure success to the enterprise. 

I shall be happy to be one of the Contribu- 
tors to such a Magazine, and to write both for 
the Reformatory and Miscellaneous Depart- 
ments. . . . 

James Freeman Clarke. 
F. H, Underwood, Esq. 

The next three letters will serve to illustrate 
the attitude of the New York writing men. 

"Tribune" Office, 
New York, Nov, 20, 1853. 

Dear Sir, — Your favor of the i8th is re- 
ceived. It will not be in my power to furnish an 
article for the first number of your proposed 
periodical, as I have a number of extra engage- 
ments now on hand. If it suits your purpose to 
receive a monthly letter from New York, giving 
an oif-hand summary of the literature, art, and 
social gossip of New York, I might incline to 
furnish it. I will communicate your note to 
Dana and Fry, and am truly yours, 

George Ripley. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

[^14] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

New York, Nov. 24th [1853]. 

My dear Sir, — Although I have had so 
much experience in the starting of new peri- 
odicals as to be now habitually doubtful of the 
success of any, I am still pleased with your pro- 
ject, because I think the country wants an out- 
and-out independent and freespoken organ of 
the kind you propose. "Putnam's" is capital in 
its way, but is necessarily limited in its range of 
topics. I cannot however promise to write you 
anything at present, as my engagements are so 
many and exacting. Nor have I anything on 
hand, except a few light travelling sketches 
which would not perhaps suit your purposes. 

Mr. Bryant desires me to say that he is already 
engaged to write for certain periodicals only, 
and regrets his inability to lend you his name. 
Mr. Bigelow is not in the city. 

With many wishes for your success I have 
the honour to be 

Your obt. Servant, 

Parke Godwin. 

Canandaigua, N. Y., Nov. 24th, '53. 
My dear Sir, — Your favor of the 19th, 
which was sent after me from home, has just 

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reached me. It would give me great pleasure to 
accede to your request, but it is impossible. My 
engagements and occupations are such that I 
could not possibly assist in your enterprise, and 
while I am honored by your application, and 
should be flattered by the announcement of my 
name as a contributor, it would be a promise 
which I could not perform. 

I am compelled to decline, but assure you 
that I attach the weightiest significance to the 
refractory sentence of your letter, and am 
Very truly yours, 

George William Curtis. 
Mr. Underwood. 

For the model of an exact, business-like re- 
ply, however, demanding the " rate per page 
{describing the page),'' we must turn to one of 
the Concord dreamers. 

Concord, Nov. 2 2d, '53. 
Dear Sir, — If you will inform me in season 
at what rate per page (describing the page) you 
will pay for accepted articles, — returning re- 
jected within a reasonable time, — and your 
terms are satisfactory, I will forward something 

[216] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

for your magazine before Dec. 5th, and you 
shall be at liberty to put my name on the list 
of contributors. 

Yours, 

Henry D. Thoreau. 

Apparently Underwood's rejoinder was sat- 
isfactory, for Thoreau's next letter was accom- 
panied by an actual manuscript. 

Concord, Dec, 2d, 1853. 
Dear Sir, — I send you herewith a complete 
article of fifty-seven pages. " Putnam's Maga- 
zine" pays me four dollars a page, but I will 
not expect to receive more for this than you pay 
to anyone else. Ofcourseyou will not make any 
alterations or omissions without consulting me. 
Yours, 

Henry D. Thoreau. 

The plan was to issue the first number early 
in January, 1 8 54, and the contributors, as Tho- 
reau's first letter indicates, were asked to send 
copy by December 5. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, then a 
young minister in Worcester, has printed in his 

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"Old Cambridge " the letters which he received 
from Underwood. The first one ran : — 

Boston, November 21, 1853. 

Dear Sir, — Messrs. J. P. Jewett & Co. 
of this city propose to establish a Literary and 
Anti-Slavery magazine — commencing prob- 
ably in January. The publishers have energy 
and capital, and will spare no pains to make the 
enterprise completely successful. They will en- 
deavor to obtain contributions from the best 
writers, and will pay liberally for all they make 
use of. Politics and the " Humanities," though, 
of course, prominent as giving character to the 
Magazine, will occupy but a small portion of its 
pages. Current literary topics, new books, the 
Fine Arts, and other matters of interest to the 
reading public will receive the most careful at- 
tention. 

I am desired to request you to become a con- 
tributor. If you are disposed to favor the pro- 
ject, and have anything written at this time, 
please forward the MS. with your reply. 

If not, please state whether we may expect to 
receive an article soon — if before December 
5th it will materially oblige us. If permitted, we 
C 2i8 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

shall announce you as a contributor, in the pro- 
spectus. The articles will all be anonymous, as 
in " Putnam's Monthly." 

Your early attention is respectfully solicited. 
With high regard. 

Truly yours, 

Francis H. Underwood. 

The scrap-book preserves Higginson's re- 
ply, — a letter characterized by the prompt 
helpfulness which the successive editors of the 
Atlantic have happily experienced for more 
than half a century. 

Worcester, Nov. 21, 1853. 

Dear Sir, — I hear with great interest of the 
proposed magazine, though I have grown dis- 
trustful of such enterprises, especially when of 
Boston origin. The publishers you name are in 
a position to do it, if any are. I gladly contrib- 
ute my name to the list of writers — and any 
counsel I can ever give, when needed. 

As to the positive amount of literary aid to 
be expected from me, I must speak very cau- 
tiously. I am very much absorbed by necessary 
writing, speaking and studies, and it is hard to 
do collateral work ; I have been engaged some 

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four months to write an article for the " Chris- 
tian Examiner" on Collier's Shakespeare ; have 
all the books collected and yet have done about 
nothing and finally given up that undertaking. 

Besides, I have access to "Putnam" for any- 
thing of a literary character in prose and verse, 
— a better paymaster, I suspect, than the new 
magazine can be expected to be. To be sure, 
"Putnam" is not . . . reformatory, and I 
should feel much more interest in yours. But 
then again I suspect Mr. Jewett would be much 
more keen on the scent of any theological 
heresy, however latent, than the editors of 
" Putnam." 

But I know I shall have something in time to 
oifer, tho* I have nothing now at hand — nor 
can I before Dec. 5. I hv. in mind especially an 
essay wh. will actually give a new aspect of the 
slavery subject! — called "The Romance of 
Slavery or American Feudalism," grouping the 
points of analogy between Mediaeval slavery 
and southern. Of Hebrew and Roman slavery 
there has been an excess of discussion: — of 
Mediaeval serfdom hardly anything is known 
and yet the analogy is more picturesque and 
more thorough. I read a lecture on this subject 
[ 220 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

at Salem this winter, but it will not be in con- 
dition to print, for a month or two. It will be, 
in that time, unless I decide to keep it for a 
lecture. 

However it is a new matter to me (your mag- 
azine) and these are only first impressions. I 
answer thus promptly, partly to express my 
good will and give my name, and partly to sug- 
gest some other names, as follows: Rev. D. A. 
Wasson of Groveland, minister of an Inde- 
pendent Church — a man of rare and growing 
intellect — author of several verses and a re- 
markable article on Lord Bacon in the " New 
Englander." 

Miss Anne Whitney of Watertown, Mass., 
author of two remarkable poems in my "Tha- 
latta" ; I know of no American woman with so 
much poetical genius, now that Mrs. J. R. 
Lowell is gone. 

Miss Eliza Sproat of Philadelphia, author of 
the original and admirable "Stories for Chil- 
dren and Poets" in the "National Era." 

But especially and above all, William Henry 

Hurlbut of Cambridge, Mass., author of those 

brilliant letters fr.Cuba in "National Era" and 

of some fine articles (a few years ago) in " N. 

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A. Review" and "Chr. Examiner." He is a 
young man of the most versatile talent, great 
industry, and (except Theo. Parker) the most 
universal scholar I know. He is a native of 
Charleston, S. C, but understands slavery thor- 
oughly and is (between ourselves) the man to 
edit the magazine. I say this with the utmost 
delicacy of opinion — not knowing whether you 
yourself are to be Financier or Agent or Editor 
of the concern. 

I suggest the names of these contributors, 
not for their sakes,but for that of the magazine, 
to which they would all prove valuable auxil- 
iaries. But perhaps you think I have been quite 
too officious already. 

Cordially yours, 

T. W. HiGGINSON. 

To this Underwood replied with the second 
of the letters printed in " Old Cambridge " : — 

Boston, November 25, 1853. 

My dear Sir, — Our Magazine is not yet 

definitely determined upon. Probably y however, 

it will be commenced. The letters I wrote for 

the enlistment of contributors have been mostly 

[ 222 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

answered favorably. We have already a very re- 
spectable list engaged. We are waiting to hear 
definitely from Mrs.Stowe,who we hope w'lW be 
induced to commence in the Feb. no. a new 
story. We are thankful for the interest you 
manifest by sending new names. I shall write to 
Mr. Hurlbut at once, and to the others in a day 
or two. Those who have already promised to 
write are Mr. Carter (formerly of the "Com- 
monwealth"), who will furnish a political article 
for each number, Mr. Hildreth (very much in- 
terested in the undertaking), Thos. W. Parsons, 
author of an excellent translation of Dante, 
Parke Godwin of the New York " Evening 
Post," Mr. Ripley of the " Tribune," Dr. Elder 
of Phila., H.D. Thoreau of Concord, Theodore 
Parker (my most valued friend), Edmund 
Quincy, James R. Lowell (from whom I have 
a most exquisite gem). 

Many to whom I have written have not re- 
plied as yet. 

I shall have the general supervision of the 
Magazine, — intending to get the best aid from 
professed litterateurs in the several depart- 
ments. We do expect to pay as much as " Put- 
nam" — that is at the rate of three dollars for 
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Park-Street Papers 

such pages as "Putnam*s," though it is prob- 
able that we shall use a trifle larger type than 
our New York contemporary. Poetry, of 
course, we pay for according to value. There 
are not above six men in America (known to 
me) to whom I would pay anything for poetry. 
There is no medium ; it is good or it is good- 
for-nothing. Lowell I esteem most; after him 
Whittier (the lastl confidently expect to secure). 

The first no. will probably be late — as late 
as Jan. 5, or even loth. It is unavoidable. But 
in Feb. we shall get before the wind. 

Mr. Jewett will be liberal as to heresy. In- 
deed he is almost a heretic himself. For myself 
I am a member of Mr. Parker's society ; but as 
we must get support moral and pecuniary from 
the whole community we shall strive to offend 
neither side. In haste. 

Most gratefully yours, 

Francis H. Underwood. 

Whittier, who was on cordial terms with his 
publisher, Jewett, writes with enthusiasm: — 

Amesbury, 25, II Mo.., 1853. 
Dear Friend, — I am delighted with the 
prospect of 2i free magazine. It will go: the 
C 224 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

time has come for it and Jewett is the man 
for the hour. 

I will try and send something on or before 
the 5th. At any rate I shall be glad to write for 
it, if my health permits. 

Wilt thou say to Jewett that I thank him for 
his capital getting up of my " Sabbath Scene." 
The illustrations are admirable — the best of 
the kind I ever saw. They do great credit to 
the artist. 

Thine truly, 

J. G. Whittier. 

In view of his later relations with the maga- 
zine, LowelFs letter — written on the same sheet 
as the manuscript poem which accompanied it 
— is of peculiar interest. The allusion in the 
first paragraph is to the death of Mrs. Lowell, 
which had taken place a month earlier. The 
poem, which then bore the title "The Oriole's 
Nest," with its sad December " Palinode," re- 
mained unpublished until Lowell himself, as 
editor of the Atlantic, printed it under the title 
"The Nest" in March, 1858. It was not in- 
cluded in any volume of his verse until the 
publication of "Heartsease and Rue" in 1888. 
C 225 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

My dear Sir, — I have made an effort for 
you, for I did not wish merely to say that I 
wished you well. This is an old poem, and 
perhaps it seems better to me than it de- 
serves — for an intense meaning has been 
added to it. 

I might promise you something for February 
if Mr. Jewett would like an expensive contribu- 
tor so soon again. I have once had an essay 
upon Valentines in my head, and I could re- 
create it. It would suit that month. 

I should be very happy to see you some even- 
ing to talk over your undertaking. Mean- 
while, thanking you heartily for the kind note 
which you wrote some time ago and wishing 
you every success, 

I remain heartily yours, 

J.R.L. 

I take it for granted that articles will be 
anonymous as in " Putnam " ? 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

23rd Nov., 1853. 

Then came, alas, the hour of bitter disap- 
pointment. J. P. Jewett & Co. failed, and the 
magazine plans were abandoned. On the very 
[ 226 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

day when the copy for the January number was 
to be ready, Lowell is writing to Underwood: — 

Elmwood, 5th Dec. 1853. 

My dear Sir, — I cannot help writing a 
word to say how truly sorry I was to hear of the 
blowing-up of your magazine. But it is not 
so irreparable as if it had been a powder maga- 
zine, though perhaps all the harder to be borne 
because it was only \n posse and not in esse. The 
explosion of one of these castles in Spain some- 
times sprinkles dust on all the rest of our lives, 
but I hope you are of better heart and will rather 
look upon the affair as a burning of your ships 
which only makes victory the more imperative. 
Although I could prove by a syllogism in bar- 
bar a that you are no worse off than you were be- 
fore, I know very well that you are^ for if it be 
bad to lose mere coin, it is still worse to lose 
hope, which is the mint in which most gold is 
manufactured. 

But, after all, is it a hopeless case ? Consider 
yourself to be in the position of all the world 
before the Mansion of our Uncle Thomas (as 
I suppose we must call it now — it has grown so 
respectable) was published, and never to have 
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Park-Street Papers 

heard of this Mr. Jew-wit. I think he ought to 

be that something ought to be done to 

him, but, for that matter, nearly all booksellers 
stand in the same condemnation. There are as 
good fish in that buccaneering sea of Biblio- 
poly as ever were caught, and if one of them 
have broken away from your harpoon, I hope 
the next may prove a downright Kraaken on 
whom, if needful, you can pitch your tent and 
live. 

Don't think that I am trifling with you. God 
knows anyjests of mine would be of a bitter sort 
just now, but I know it is a good thing for a man 
to be made to look at his misfortune till it as- 
sumes its true relation to things about it. So 
don't think me intrusive if I nudge your elbow 
among the rest. 

I shall come and see you some evening this 
week, when I feel myself not too dull to be in- 
flicted on anybody, and till then 

Believe me with sincere interest 
Yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 

Whittier's note, written the next day, wasted 
no words : — 

[ 228 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Amesbury, 6th 12 Mo.y 1853. 
Dear Sir, — I regret the failure of the maga- 
zine project. I was quite sure of its success. 

I sent thee a poem, care of J. P. J. & Co., 
which I will thank thee to return to me imme- 
diately, and thereby greatly oblige 
Thine truly, 

John G. Whittier. 

Whatever publicity may have been given to 
the failure of IJnderwood's scheme, Longfellow 
apparently knew nothing of what had happened, 
as the date of the following dilatory note will 
show: — 

Cambridge, February 17, 1854. 

Dear Sir, — I hope you will pardon me for 
having left so long unanswered your letter about 
a New Magazine or Literary Paper. The fact is, 
I could not say " Yes," and did not want to say 
" No " ; and therefore said nothing. 

Between the two forms proposed, a Maga- 
zine, monthly, and a weekly newspaper, I should 
have no hesitation in deciding. I very much pre- 
fer the latter. You can fire much faster and do 
more execution. 

As to being a contributor to either, it would 
[ 229 ] 



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not at present be in my power. I have already 
more engagements on hand than I can conven- 
iently attend to, and should feel any addition a 
burden and a vexation. 

I remain, with best wishes for your success, 
Very truly yours, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

By the time Longfellow's letter was written, 
however. Underwood had entered the counting- 
room of Phillips, Sampson & Co. Here he lost 
no opportunities of cultivating the acquaintance 
of literary men, and in the course of the next two 
or three years he became prominent in the social 
gatherings ofthe Cambridge and Boston writers. 
He was one of the leaders of that loosely or- 
ganized group of diners who after 1857 used to 
meet under the name of the "Atlantic" or the 
"Magazine" Club, — a gathering often con- 
fused with the Saturday Club, although Long- 
fellow's Journal and many other contemporary 
writings clearly make the distinction. 

The following letter from Professor Felton 
gives an agreeable picture ofthe cordial relations 
ofthe men who were so soon to become contrib- 
utors to the long-deferred magazine. 
[ 230 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Cambridge, Friday, Fe^ 13,1856. 
in bed 

My dear Mr. Underwood, — I am much 
obliged to you for taking the trouble of inform- 
ing me of to-morrow's dinner — but it is like 
holding a Tantalus' cup to my lips. I returned 
ill ten days ago from Washington, having taken 
the epidemic that is raging there at the pre- 
sent moment, and have been bed-ridden ever 
since, living on a pleasant variety of porridge and 
paregoric. Yesterday I was allowed to nibble a 
small mutton-chop, but it proved too much for 
me and — here I am, worse than ever. I have no 
definite prospect of dining at Parker's within the 
present century. My porridge is to be reduced 
to gruel and paregoric increased to laudanum. I 
am likely to be brought to the condition of the 
student in Canning's play, — 

'* Here doomed to starve on water gru- 
el never shall I see the U- 

niversity of Gottingen,'* 

and never dine at Parker's again ! I hope you 
will have a jovial time ; may the mutton be ten- 
der and the goose not tough : May the Moet 
sparkle like Holmes's wit: May the carving 
knives be as sharp as Whipple's criticism : May 

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the fruits be as rich as Emerson's philosophy : 
Maygood digestion waiton appetite andHealth 
on both — and I pray you think of me as the 
glass goes round. . . . 

Horizontally but ever cordially 
Your friend, 

C. C. Felton. 

The following note of regret from Emerson 
refers to another Saturday dinner arranged by 
Underwood. 

Concord, 26 August y 1856. 
My dear Sir, — I did not receive your note 
until the Boston train had already gone on Sat- 
urday. I am well contented that the Club should 
be solidly organized, and grow. I am so irregu- 
larly in town, that I dare not promise myself as a 
constant member, yet I live so much alone that 
I set a high value on my social privileges, and I 
wish by all means to retain the right of an oc- 
casional seat. 

So, with thanks, and best wishes, 
Yours, 

R.W.Emerson. 

Mr. Underwood. 

[ 232 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Underwood now thought that the time was 
ripe for bringing the magazine project to the 
front once more. Mr. Phillips was slow to take 
an interest in it, but finally agreed to consult 
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. He had published 
her"Dred"in 1856, although he had previ- 
ously rejected " Uncle Tom's Cabin " through 
fear ofalienating his Southern trade. Mrs. Stowe 
was instantly enthusiastic over the proposed 
magazine, and promised her support. It was this 
fact, as Underwood often said in later years, 
which decided the wavering mind of the pub- 
lisher. Then came the famous dinner given by 
Mr. Phillips on May 5, 1 8 57, to the men whose 
cooperation was thought to be essential. Al- 
though Mr. Arthur Oilman's article, printed 
in the Atlantic for November, 1907, describes 
this dinner, it may be interesting to quote 
Mr. Phillips's own letter about it, as given in 
Dr. Hale's "James Russell Lowell and his 
Friends" (p. 157). 

IMayig, 1857.] 

" I must tell you about a little dinner-party 
I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, 
perhaps, to state that the origin of it was a de- 

[ ^33 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

sire to confer with my literary friends on a some- 
what extensive literary project, the particulars 
of which I shall reserve until you come. But to 
the party: My invitations included only R. W. 
Emerson, H.W. Longfellow, J.R. Lowell, Mr. 
Motley (the 'Dutch Republic' man), O. W. 
Holmes, Mr. Cabot, and Mr. Underwood, our 
literary man. Imagine youruncle as the head of 
such a table, with such guests. The above named 
were the only ones invited, and they were all 
present. We sat down at three p. m., and rose at 
eight. The time occupied was longer by about 
four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the 
habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, 
but it was the richest time intellectually by all 
odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and 
' literary man ' out of the group, I think you will 
agree with me that it would be difficult to dupli- 
cate that number of such conceded scholarship 
in the whole country besides. 

" Mr. Emersontookthe first post of honor at 
my right, and Mr. Longfellow the second at my 
left. The exact arrangement of the table was as 
follows: — 



[ 234 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Mr. Underwood 

Cabot Lowell 

Motley Holmes 

Longfellow Emerson 

Phillips 

"They seemed so well pleased that they ad- 
journed, and invited me to meet them again to- 
morrow, when I shall meet the same persons, 
with one other (Whipple, the essayist) added to 
that brilliant constellation of philosophical, po- 
etical and historical talent. Each one is known 
alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read be- 
yond the limits of theEnglish language. Though 
all this is known to you, you will pardon me for 
intrudingituponyou. Butstill I have the vanity 
to believe that you will think them the most 
natural thoughts in the world to me. Though 
I say it that should not, it was the proudest day 
of my life." 

" In this letter," continues Dr. Hale," he does 
not tell of his own little speech, made at the 
launch. But at the time we all knew of it. He 
announced the plan of the magazine by saying, 
*Mr. Cabotis much wiser than I am. Dr. Holmes 
can write funnier verses than I can. Mr. Motley 

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can write history better than I. Mr. Emerson is 
a philosopher, and I amnot. Mr. Lowell knows 
more of the old poets than I.' But after this 
confession he said/ But none of you knows the 
American people as well as I do.' " 

Exactly what Underwood thought, as he 
listened to this self-satisfied speech of his em- 
ployer, is not recorded in his scrap-book. Nor 
do the letters of the next few weeks throw any 
light upon the now familiar story of Lowell's 
accepting the editorship of the new magazine 
upon the condition that Holmes should be- 
come a contributor, and of Holmes's sug- 
gestion that it should be christened "The 
Atlantic Monthly." Who chose John Win- 
throp's head as a design for the brown cover 
does not appear. 

Underwood, meanwhile, had sailed for Eng- 
land in June to secure contributors. He en- 
joyed his mission, and his scrap-book contains 
many hospitable notes from Charles Reade, 
Wilkie Collins, John Forster, A. H. Clough, 
and other English writers. Reade was anxious 
to become acquainted with "any honest pub- 
lisher who can be brought to see that I am 
worth one third as much as Thackeray, or 

[ ^36 :\ 



The Editor who was never Editor 

more. . . . * White Lies ' is my best story.'* 
In reply to Underwood's promise that the 
Atlantic's rate of payment would be equal to 
that offered by the English reviews, James 
Hannay replies : — 

"With regard to the remuneration, as you 
intimated that it was to be regulated by the 
best pay here, I may mention that that is a 
guinea a page, or sixteen guineas a sheet." 

Encouraged by promises of contributions, 
Underwood sailed for home, leaving the man- 
uscripts to follow. Some of them, as Mr. Norton 
has related (Atlantic for November, 1907), dis- 
appeared forever with Mr. Norton's unlucky 
trunk. A pleasant note from Shirley Brooks, 
of the staff of "Punch," refers to the loss of 
his manuscript: — 

The Garrick Club, 
London, Oct. 28, '57. 

My dear Sir, — I have been away from 
London, or your letter would have been an- 
swered long ago. I should be ashamed to look 
at its date but for this, and you will have been 
sure that the delay was caused in some such 
manner. 

The mishap to which it refers, (your note, 

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I mean) you will almost have forgotten by this 
time. I have no copy of the article I sent, and 
whether I can wind myself up to the point of 
doing it, decently, twice, I hardly know. I 
seldom can manage that. But as soon as I 
have my hands a little free I will send you 
something. In the meantime pray consider 
that there is no pecuniary matter between us — 
accept the intention to serve the new maga- 
zine — and let us start fresh. Only, if you 
notice in any of the New York or other papers 
an article called "My Ghost,'* do you lay hands 
on the pirate — the N. Y. " Herald " tells us 
there are no police in that city, or virtually 
none, but by that time things may be better. 

If you can forward me a copy of the maga- 
zine to the above address, I shall receive it with 
pleasure, and will do anything I can to pro- 
mote its interests here. I trust that none of the 
catastrophes in your financial world have af- 
fected anybody whom you care about. Believe 
me, 

My dear Sir, 

Yours very truly, 

Shirley Brooks. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

[ 238 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

By August Underwood was at his desk 
again, soliciting articles from American authors. 
Herman Melville, the author of "Moby Dick" 
and " Typee," writes : — 

PiTTSFIELD, Aug. 19th, 1 857. 

Gentlemen, — Your note inviting my con- 
tribution to your proposed magazine was re- 
ceived yesterday. 

I shall be very happy to contribute, though 
I cannot now name the day when I shall have 
any article ready. 

Wishing you the best success in your laud- 
able enterprise, I am 

Very truly yours, 

H. Melville. 
Phillips, Sampson ^ Co. 
Boston. 

Horace Mann, to whom Underwood had 
written for articles in 1853, replies to a new 
invitation : " I have no specific topic in my 
mind, but I could not write on anything out- 
side of your ' cause of Freedom and advance- 
ment of sound literature.' " 

Very characteristic is this note from William 
Douglas O'Connor, later the author of " The 
Good Grey Poet." 

[ 239 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

Office "Saturday Eve. Post," 
Philada., Aug. 20th, '57. 

My dear Sir, — I have been striving very- 
hard to make kosmos out of the chaos of a 
MS tale I have for some time had on hand — 
a thing of shreds and patches it is, at present, 
existing only in stray sheets, scraps and mem- 
oranda — but to save my life I cannot get time 
enough to build this little world of mine, I 
have to give so much to the affairs of this 
other world — the "Post ** — of which I am 
in effect, the governor, and all the more so now 
since the ostensible chief is away, and every- 
thing devolves on me. I am secretly chagrined 
to think that my Httle star will not be visible 
this month in the march of your galaxy, for, 
dropping similes, I wanted very much to have 
a paper of mine in your first number. How- 
ever, man proposes and the "Saturday Post" 
disposes, so I submit, as you will find less dis- 
appointment in doing. 

I shall still endeavor to give you a story, — 
for the second number if possible, or if not, for 
a later number, — but I beg of you to expect 
nothing of me, for though my promises are 
words of fate, I am unable to make them now^ 
[ 240 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

my time being already engrossed so much as 
to make it difficult even to attend to my cas- 
ual correspondence. And then, besides, when 
you do get a MS of mine, it is quite likely 
you will not like it, the revolution and the 
radicalisms running so naturally to my pen, 
and my tales being my only present means of 
securing to myself the luxury of my individual 
views and opinions. 

With many regrets and hopes, and with 
twice as many good wishes for the prosperity 
of the coming magazine, I remain very 
Truly yours, 

Wm. D. O'Connor. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

J. T. Trowbridge's note, accompanying his 
contribution to the first number, shows that 
he thought that the name of the magazine 
was not yet determined upon : — 

Ogden, Aug. 24, 1857. 

My dear U , I send you a sketch. I 

don't know whether it is good or bad. It is a 
subject I have long wished to write upon ; and 
on the rec't of your letter, I dashed off the 
history of John Henry Pendlam. I can swear 

[ 241 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

that he Is a true type of a certain class of re- 
formers ; I have avoided burlesque and exag- 
geration. But whether the story is suitable for 
the Magazine, you must determine. Do not 
use it, if it is not up to the mark. 

How about the name ? If the "American 
Monthly" will not do, what do you say to 
" The Anglo-American " ? 

J. T. Trowbridge. 

P. S. — I have written to R. H. Stoddard to 
send you a story. 

Address me at Wallingford, Vermont. 

Paul. 

Here, too, is the first of several girlish let- 
ters from a woman whose stories gave keen 
pleasure to the early readers of the magazine, 
and whose achievement as a pioneer in the field 
in which Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, and 
Miss Alice Brown have since wrought so nota- 
bly still awaits due recognition by the critics: — 

Hartford, August zgxhy 1857. 
Mr. F. H. Underwood. 

Dear Sir, — I regret that my absence from 
home prevented my receiving your letter of 
[ 242 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

the 25th until to-day. I have been idle all sum- 
mer, because I am not strong, and was for- 
bidden to write, so I have nothing to offer you 
that is very fresh, or that I should choose to 
make a " first appearance " in. I have a little 
sketch of New England life called "Turkey 
Tracks," not copied ; a romance Mr. Curtis 
had accepted for "Putnam," "Maya, the 
Child of the Kingdom," which I have sent 
for ; and a story partly written — " RacheFs 
Refusal " ; any one of these I could send you 
within a week from date, if you let me know 
directly. I hope by and by to do something 
better for you, when I shall have time and 
strength to fulfill other and previous engage- 
ments. 

Be so good as to give me a definite address 
for the MSS., and let me know your decision 
as soon as is quite convenient. Letters will 
most securely reach me directed to the care of 
Mr. H. W. Terry. With the best wishes for 
your success I remain 

Yours very truly. 

Rose Terry. 

I ought perhaps to say that the romance is 
[ 243 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

considered by one of my critical friends the best 
thing I have ever written. I cannot judge of 
these things myself. 

We have been long in reaching the actual first 
number of the Atlantic. The financial stress of 
1857 harassed Messrs. Phillips, Sampson & 
Co., and publication was nearly suspended, after 
all. But in October the first issue appeared, 
under date of November. Underwood's scrap- 
book contains this highly interesting note from 
Emerson, concerning editorial suggestions upon 
two of the four poems which he contributed, in 
addition to the prose essay on " Illusions," to 
the initial number. If Lowell suggested, as he 
apparently did, the substitution of 

** If, on the heath, beneath the moon,^'' 

for 

'* If, on the heath, under the moon," 

in the fourth stanza of the "Rommany Girl," 
he certainly proposed "anew cacophony" where 
there was undoubtedly an "old one." Emerson 
changed the line in later years to 

" If, on the heath, below the moon." 

But it is clear from this note that we owe the 
[ 244 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

present form of the superb opening line of 
"Days," — 

** Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,'* 

to the editor, who had objected to "hypocriti- 
cal." 

Concord, Sept. 24, 1857. 

Dear Sir, — I return the proof in which I 
have no correction to make. Mr. Lowell showed 
a bad rhythm, but I do not quite like the new 
word he offered me — 

** benea/i' the moon,'* 
where the new cacophony troubles my ears as 
much as the old one ; and for the second sug- 
gestion about the word "hypocritical," he is 
right again, but I cannot mend it to-day. If he 
will alter them, as he proposed before, or other- 
wise, he has my thankful consent. 
Yours, 

R. W. Emerson. 

Mr. Underwood. 

It is well known, also, that Lowell suggested 
to Whittier the peculiar form of the refrain which 
adds so greatly to the effectiveness of " Skip- 
per Ireson's Ride." In LowelFs " Letters" we 
read : — 

[245] 



Park-Street Papers 

Cambridge, November ^^ 1857. 

My dear Whittier, — I thank you heart- 
ily for the ballad, which will go into the next 
number. I like it all the better for its provin- 
cialism — in all fine pears, you know, we can 
taste the o\^ fucker, 

I knew the story well. I am familiar with 
Marblehead and its dialect, and as the burthen 
is intentionally provincial, I have taken the lib- 
erty to print it in such a way as shall give the 
peculiar accent — thus — 

** Cap*n Ireson for his horrd hort 

Was torred and feathered and corriedin a corrt." 

That's the way I Ve always "horrd it" — 
only it began " OldFlud Ireson." What a good 
name Ireson (son of wrath) is for the hero of 
such a history. . . . 

The scrap-book contains Whittier's reply : — 

Amesbury, 6th, nth Mo., 1857. 

D^* Friend, — I thank thee for sending the 
proof of Cap Ireson, with thy suggestions. I 
adopt them, as thou wilt see, mainly. It is an 
improvement. As it stands now, I like the thing 
well — "hugely,'' as Capt Shandy would say. 

As to the pecuniary allusion of thy note, I 

[246] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

am sorely in want of money (as who is not at 
this time) — but of course will await your con- 
venience. 

The magazine will, shall, must succeed. The 
election of Banks is a good beginning for it. 
Thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

That the ballad made an immediate im- 
pression is seen in this note from Fitz-James 
O'Brien, who writes about the acceptance of 
his brilliant story "The Diamond Lens": — 

Harper's, Franklin Sq're, 

Nov. 28th [1857]. 

Dear Sirs, — I am much pleased that my 
story has met your approval, and shall be glad 
at some future time to present you with other 
articles. 

I have not calculated the number of pages 
which the " Diamond Lens " will make, and 
will thank you to have the computation made 
and remit to me the amount according to what- 
ever scale of prices you see fit to include it in. 

It will be in a great measure a labor of love 
to write for a magazine of so high a tone as the 

[ 247 ] 



Park-Street Papers - 

Atlantic. I have long felt the want of a channel 
in which to place articles on which I might be- 
stow labor and thought. Here in New York we 
are far too apt to neglect the higher aims. 

Will you permit me to express the great plea- 
sure I have experienced in reading " Skipper 
Ireson*s Ride" in your last number. It abounds 
in lyrical fire, pathos and strength. 
Yours truly, 

Fitz-James O'Brien. 

Messrs. Phillips, Sampson ^ Co. 

This reminds me that Thomas Bailey Al- 
drichj writing in 1897 ^^ ^ member of the At- 
lantic's staff who had prepared a sketch of the 
first forty years of the magazine, referred thus 
to O'Brien's story : — 

". . . I am sorry that the Atlantic did not 
put in its claim to being the father of the short 
story. Of course there were excellent short sto- 
ries before the Atlantic was born — Poe's and 
Hawthorne's — but the magazine gave the short 
story a place which it had never before reached. 
It began with ^The Diamond Lens' of Fitz- 
James O'Brien, and ended with — -well, it has 
not ended yet." 

[ 248 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

The praise elicited by the early numbers is 
fairly represented by this note from Henry 
Ward Beecher : — 

Brooklyn, Oct. 31, '57. 
My dear Sir, — The Atlantic has a good 
look — robust and bold. I hope for it a historic 
reputation. As New England has been the 
Brain of America, it would be a pity if her mouth 
did not speak worthy of her head and heart. 
Very truly yours, 

H. W. Beecher. 

Although the authorship of the articles was 
supposed to be kept secret, a privately printed 
list of the authors in each number was soon sent 
out to newspaper reviewers and other friends of 
the magazine. It was not until the tenth vol- 
ume, however, in 1 8 62, that an index of authors 
was printed at the completion of each volume. 
The first signed articles to appear were Harriet 
Hosmer's " Process of Sculpture " and Goldwin 
Smith's " England and America," in December, 
1 8 64. Occasional signed articles followed, such 
as William M. Rossetti's in 1866 and George 
Eliot's in May, 1 870, but it was not until July, 
1870, that signatures were regularly used. In- 

[ 249 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

asmuch as the names of the more prominent 
contributors engaged were printed in the initial 
advertising pages, it was not difficult to guess 
the authorship of most of the articles. But even 
without this, discerning readers were at once 
aware of the high quality of the new periodical. 
Wilkie Collins wrote from London: — 

1 1 Harley Place, Marylebone Road, 
London, December ^oxk, 1857. 

My dear Sir, — ... Pray don't trouble 
yourself to answer this letter, until my contri- 
bution to the magazine reaches you — when I 
shall be glad to hear of its safe arrival. I shall look 
out with great interest for the story to which you 
refer in the third number. Excepting the diffi- 
culties of finding good tellers of tales (sorely 
felt here, let me say, as well as in America), with 
such men as Longfellow and Emerson to head 
your list of contributors, I cannot think that 
you need fear the rivalry of any magazine in any 
region of the civilized world. 

Believe me to remain 

Very cordially yours, 

Wilkie Collins. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

[ 250 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Charles Reade, several of whose vigorous 
and pugnacious epistles were preserved by Un- 
derwood, wrote in the autumn of 1858 : — 

6 Bolton Row, Mayfair, Oct. 10. 

Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge yours of 
date Sept. 28, and as requested answer by re- 
turn mail. I will never under any circumstances 
submit a MS. of mine to the chance of any 
other writer comprehending it and seeing its 
merit. If therefore that is an absolute condi- 
tion, you will never see a line of mine in the 
Atlantic Monthly while 1 live. The stories you 
do publish in the Monthly could never have 
been selected by any judge competent to sit in 
judgment on me. We had better wait a little. 
You will find that every word of fiction I pro- 
duce will succeed more or less ; this in a world 
crammed with feeble scribblers is a sufficient 
basis for treaty. As to the exact manner of suc- 
cess no man can pronounce on it beforehand. 

'^ White Lies" which you seem to think 
has failed has on the contrary been a greater 
success than " It is Never Too Late to Mend." 
At all events it is so represented to me by the 
Publishers and this not in complimentary 

[251 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

phrases only, of which you and I know the 
value, but in figures that represent cash. 

Yet, as you are aware, it had to resist 2i panic. 
A truce to egotism, and let me congratulate 
you on the circulation and merit of your 
monthly. It is a wonderful product at the price. 
Good paper, excellent type, and the letters dis- 
engaged so that one can read it. 

Then as for the matter, the stories are no 
worse than "Blackwood's" and "Erasers'," 
etc., etc., and some of the other matter is in- 
finitely beyond our monthly and trimestral 
scribblers, being genuine in thought and Eng- 
lish in expression. Whereas what passes for 
criticism here is too often a mere mixture of 
Cuck-oo and hee-haw. A set of conventional 
phrases turned not in English but in Norman 
French and the jargon of the schools. 

After ^YQ and twenty years of these rotten 
old cabbage stalks without a spark of thought, 
novelty or life among them, I turn my nose to 
such papers as your " Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table," etc. with a sense of relief and 
freshness. . . . Success attend you, and when you 
are ripe for Tours truly Charles Reade 

let me know. 
[ 252 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Meanwhile Underwood was unweariedly 
active, not only at his desk but in the pleasures 
of good fellowship with other musical, artistic, 
and literary spirits. His scrap-book contains 
many a charming whimsical letter from F. J. 
Child, who usually addressed him as " Sotto- 
bosco," and was wont to drop into French or 
Italian for a convenient word. Even the self- 
contained Emerson writes about the luck 
which goes to a dinner in anything but a 
transcendental vein : — 

Concord, 21 iV<?f. [1857]. 
Dear Sir, — I am sorry I cannot come to 
town to-day, and join your strong party at 
dinner. I shall be in town on Tuesday, prob- 
ably, and I will not fail to come to your Coun- 
ting Room and I will think in the meantime 
what I can do. From what you say of the 
club dinner, I have no dream of any such self- 
denying ordinance as you intimate. There is 
always a good deal of luck goes to a dinner, 
and if ours was a heavy one, as you say it was, 
there is the more reason tobeHeve the luck will 
turn and be with us next time. But I was in 
the dark about it, and only regretted that I 

C ^53 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

could not stay longer to hear the stories out. 

I can send you nothing for the Atlantic sooner 

than the end of the month, but of this I will 

speak when I see you. 

Respectfully, 

R. W. Emerson. 
Mr. Underwood. 

Emerson's next letter alludes to the famous 
dinner at Porter's Tavern, described by Mr. 
Oilman in the Atlantic for November, 1907. 

Concord, Friday Evening, 

18 Dec. [1857]. 

Dear Sir, — I have been out of town for a 
few days and find your messages only now 
on my return to-night. I am sorry you should 
have deferred the good meeting on my account, 
for though I cannot help a feast, I hate to hinder 
one. But if Mr. Lowell and you have chosen 
that I shall come, I will not stay away on Mon- 
day at 5. You say at Porters which I suppose to 
be Porters at Cambridge. If not send me word. 
You are very kind to offer me a bed ; but I shall 
have to go to my old haunts. So with thanks. 
Yours, 

R. W. Emerson. 

Mr. Underwood. 

[ 254 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

After the appearance of the January num- 
ber (1858) Whittier writes : — 

Dear fd, — A lady friend of mine, Mrs. 
Randolph of Philada. sends me the enclosed 
to hand over to thee if I think best. 

I believe there is something due me — but 
I would not mention it were it not for the fact 
that, in common with most others, I am at this 
time sadly " out of pocket." 

Dr. Holmes' " Autocrat " is thrice excellent 
and the little poem at its close is booked for 
immortality.' 

Very truly thy friend, 

J. G. W. 

Give us more papers like " N. E. Minis- 
ters." 

Of the February number Judge Hoar of 
Concord writes : — 

Jan, 27, 1858. 

My dear Sir, — I am exceedingly flattered 

and obliged by your invitation to dine with the 

Magazine Club, and (as the French have it) 

inexpressibly desolated by my inability to ac- 

' *' The Old Man Dreams.*' January, 1858. 



Park-Street Papers 

cept it. I am attending a hearing before a Rail- 
road Committee at the State House which is 
to go on at 3 p. m. and would leave no time 
for the dinner. 

My best wishes attend the Magazine, its 
editors and contributors. May it never blow 
up ! I think the February number surpassed 
any promises that were made for it — and that 
the Doctor's exquisite little " Nautilus " is in 
rather a finer strain than anything he has given 
us before. 

Very truly yours, 

E. R. Hoar. 

F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

Meanwhile Charles Eliot Norton was writ- 
ing from Newport, December 125, 1857: "I 
am very glad to hear of the success of the At- 
lantic. The third number certainly shows no 
falling off. ... If you care for this that fol- 
lows from Ruskin you are welcome to have it 
published. . . . Mr. Ruskin says: 'I was 
delighted with the magazine and all that was 
in it. What a glorious thing of LowelFs that 
is, — but it is too bad to quiz Pallas. I can 
stand it about anybody but her.' " 

[ 256 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

A little later Mr. Norton, with a kindness 
which has not ceased during half a century, was 
commending a new English story writer to 
the Atlantic's attention, — no less a personage 
than ''Mr, George Eliot" ! 

Newport, Monday [1858]. 

Dear Mr, Underwood, . . . "Adam 
Bede " seems to me the best novel in points 
of artistic development of the story and clear 
drawing of character that we have had for a 
long time. It does not show so much imagina- 
tion as Miss Bronte's books, — nor such fine 
feminine insight and tenderness of feeling as 
Mrs. Gaskell's. 

But if you could get Mr. George Eliot to write 
a story for the Atlantic I think it would be sure 
to answer well. It would require a handsome of- 
fer to tempt him, — for his book is universally 
popular in England, and he can make his own 
terms with the publishers. . . . 
Ever truly yours, 

Charles E. Norton. 

That there were some thorns in the editorial 
cushions, however, is plainly indicated in some 

[ 257 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

of Lowell's Letters, and Underwood had his 
share of them. Would-be contributors then, as 
now, studied the pages of the magazine and 
could not understand why their own articles 
were not better than those selected by the edi- 
tors. Witness this sorrowful note from the au- 
thor of " Bitter Sweet " and " Kathrina " : — 

"Republican" Office, 
Springfield, D^r. 24, 1857. 

Dear Sir, — I am too old and too busy to 
make myself miserable over what in other cir- 
cumstances would be a great disappointment to 
me. It is simply mortification, but I bow to the 
editorial right. The reason given for not pub- 
lishing the "Talk with my Minister" I under- 
stand. The reason for declining the sketch, I find 
it hard to understand with the pages of the At- 
lantic before me. So of "My Children." You and 
the enterprise with which you are connected 
have my best wishes, and you will be relieved to 
know that I shall read the Monthly and trouble 
you no more. With regards to Mr. Phillips, 
Very truly yours, 

J. G. Holland. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 

[258] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

It is pleasant to see that Underwood pasted 
into his scrap-book another letter from Dr. Hol- 
land, twenty years later, and of a more agreeable 
kind : — 

Editorial Rooms of ' ' Scribner' s Monthly, ' ' 
743 Broadway, 
New York, October lo, 1878. 

Dear Mr. Underwood, — Do you remem- 
ber me? I used to write for you — a little. Now, 
by Dr. Holmes's suggestion, I am going to ask 
you to "return the compliment." 

We are to have an illustrated biography of 
the brilliant doctor, and you are the man chosen 
to write it. Will you do it? About 8,000 words. 
Yours very truly, 

J. G. Holland. 

One contributor, at least, smartedunder Low- 
ell's exercise of the editorial functions. This was 
Parke Godwin, an able and opinionated man, 
who had written for the first number an article 
on "The Financial Flurry," — a subject not un- 
timely, by the way, for November, 1907. He 
followed it with political articles in January and 
February, 1858, but to his eight pages on " Mr. 
Buchanan's Administration "in the April num- 

[ 259 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

ber, Lowell, apparently without consulting Mr. 
Godwin, added six pages of his own, expressing 
"contempt" and "humiliation" at the admin- 
istration. The editor's portion of the article was 
indeed separated from the contributor's by a 
blank line, and the article was of course un- 
signed. But Godwin was very angry, as his let- 
ter to poor Underwood, who had apparently 
attempted an explanation, will show : — 

New York, March 26, '58. 

My dear Mr. Underwood, — The pur- 
port of your note, if I understand it, is, that 
"your publishers" do not like my articles, 
because a certain alleged want of " fervor " dis- 
appoints the newsvenders. As this is the first 
expression of opinion that I have had from any- 
body, connected with the magazine, I am glad 
to be enlightened. 

The deficiency imputed to them, or any other 
deficiency, would have been a good reason for 
suppressing them, altogether : but it is not a 
good reason for mutilating them ; nor does it 
justify any man in appending to them,w^ithout 
my knowledge or consent, several pages of his 
own remarks. 

[ 260 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

These articles were written after a careful sur- 
vey of the whole field of discussion, — from a 
pretty good knowledge of the state of public 
opinion : and in view of the yet nascent ten- 
dencies of parties. They were addressed to the 
reason and good sense of the American people 
rather than to the feeHngs and prejudices of fac- 
tions. I constructed them also — particularly in 
the omissions — with reference to the near and 
probable future of Parties, so that the Cause of 
the Right would not be injured by any needless 
virulence, — and yet the truth be quite openly 
and roundly asserted. I did not hope to satisfy 
the "fervid'* AboHtion sentiment of New Eng- 
land: nor to write sensation articles for the 
news venders : but I did hope to make the Mag- 
azine gradually a power and an authority in the 
best minds of the country. It seems that I have 
made a mistake : and that my considerate sen- 
tences are unsuited to the " fervid " atmosphere 
of Boston. 

Now, this is a mistake that I cannot, because 
I will not correct. I have never yet written for 
mere factions or localities. I have studied the 
politics of this country many years, with an aver- 
age degree of intelligence, I hope : with the sin- 

[261 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

cerity of a patriot, I know : and also in the large 
and thoughtful spirit of philosophy. I am there- 
fore as a writer, no " thunderer " — as the gentle- 
man who attempts to supply my deficiencies is, 
— perhaps, — and consequently, as thunder is 
needed, I willingly resign my place to him. I 
shall hereafter look with much interest towards 
the demonstrations of this new Love, — hoping 
that you too may be satisfied ! 

I learn from your note that Mr. Lowell was 
the person who took upon himself to curtail my 
article, and then to substitute his own matter. 
For Mr. Lowell's general poetic and literary 
abilities I have a high respect : but I have never 
heard of him as a peculiarly competent political 
thinker or writer: and, however that may be, I 
must say frankly that I should prefer to put 
my writings before the public without his "im- 
provements.'* 

Under these circumstances I do not see how 
you can expect from me the promised article on 
the " Decadence of Democracy "; apart of what 
I reserved to say in that Mr. Lowell has anti- 
cipated, and the rest, I imagine, would be ex- 
posed to the same liabilities the former articles 
have been. The conditions are not accordant 
[ 262 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

with my sense of self-respect. At the same time, 
as I may not have contributed my full number 
of pages according to our original agreement, I 
will endeavor to satisfy the terms of the contract 
in some other line. 

The sketch entitled "Attilee" you do not 
refer to, — nor my offer of the history, — and I 
beg leave therefore to withdraw both from your 
consideration. 

You speak of " conflicting interests and opin- 
ions," — but let me say that I have had no con- 
flict with anybody. I was solicited to write, and 
did so (often in too great hurry under your ur- 
gency) : and since what I have written does not 
suit you, you have a perfect right to say so. I 
should have liked it better if you had been more 
direct and frank in your method of communi- 
cating the fact ; but I certainly acquit you per- 
sonally of any unkindness or unfriendHness in 
the premises. My sentiments as to Mr. Low- 
ell's proceedings are another affair. 

Fred Cozzens and I had arranged to go and 
eat a dinner with you on Saturday : but as we 
are afraid that we should be found very cold and 
dull clods amid the fervid and glowing wits who 
surround Maga,our prudence has got the bet- 

[ 263 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

ter of our valour : we shall instead warm up our 
heavy clay with some less Olympian brewages. 
Yours truly, 

Parke Godwin. 

Other editorial embarrassments were of a 
slighter character. When Underwood asked 
T. B. Aldrich to alter his " Blue Bell " rhymes, 
at Lowell's request, the younger poet refused,^ 
and withdrew the verses. The scrap-book re- 
veals the fact that it was Lowell himself who 
had desired the alteration, and who was now 
wondering what had become of the poem. But 
the Atlantic never saw it again ; although Al- 
drich ultimately adopted the editorial sugges- 
tion. 

[1858.] 

My dear Underwood, — You will remem- 
ber that I asked you to send the "Blue Bells" 
to Mr. Aldrich for an alteration in one of the 
stanzas. When that is made it shall go in. I 
think you have it. 

I am going to make a gaol-delivery of verse 
in the next number. 

Yrs. ever, 

J. R.L. 

' Aldrich*s note is printed on p. 152. 

[264] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

One is tempted to quote all of Aldrlch's in- 
imitable notes to Underwood, as well as letters 
from Sainte-Beuve and other foreign writers, 
and many a friendly line from Holmes and 
Whittier. Howcharacteristicof the Autocrat is 
the blithe " let her slide " of the following epistle, 
referring to the lines "The Living Temple" 
(May, 1858). 

My dear Mr. Underwood, — If it is pos- 
sible to change a word in my last poem I can 
get rid of a repetition I have just noticed. If it 
is too late, let her slide. 

Instead of 

'* But warmed by that mysterious flame " 

Read 

«* But warmed by that unchanging flame. ' ' 

Yours, O. W. H. 

Monday evening. 

But the end of Underwood*s editorial work 
upon the magazine was at hand. Mr. Phillips's 
death in the summer of 1859, following the 
death of Mr. Sampson, led to the suspension 
and dissolution of the firm. A letter from a 
worried New York poet paints the situation : — 
I 26s ] 



Park-Street Papers 

Debenture Room, Custom House, 

New York, Sept. 7, '59. 

Dear Sir, — I wrote Messrs. Phillips and 
Sampson a business note two or three weeks 
ago, asking them to send me a check for a poem 
of mine in the August number of the Atlantic 
Monthly. No check has reached me; no no- 
tice has been taken of the note. As both mem- 
bers of the firm have "gone dead," I suppose 
it useless to write them beyond the Styx, so I 
trouble you. The house lives, I suppose, if the 
men die. I want the money for the poem, what- 
ever it may be, or I want to know that I am not 
to have it, so that I may forget all about it, and 

turn to 

<* Fresh fields and pastures new. ' ' 

Will you not see to the affair and oblige me? 
Have a check, or the money sent me (my direc- 
tion is over leaf) or tell me for what sum to draw 
on Phillips and Sampson. At any rate answer 
this note, that I may know that it reaches you. 
Perhaps I had better tell you that the poem was 
printed under the head of "The End of All." 
Respectfully, etc., 

R. H. Stoddard. 
F. H. Underwood, Esq. 
Boston. 

[ 266 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

A kindly note from George William Curtis, 
two weeks later, is like the fall of the curtain : — 

New York, 20 Sep., 1859. 

My dear Sir, — Will you send me all the 
unused MSS. of Mr. Cranch's that you have, 
and can you tell me the probable destiny of the 
plates of "Huggermugger " and "Kobbotozo " ? 
Was the contract for a limited term, — 1 have 
forgotten. 

The news of the suspension of your house fell 
heavily upon all of us who were interested in 
the publishing of good books and of the Atlan- 
tic. My constant employments have engaged 
me elsewhere, — but could not lead me beyond 
the heartiest sympathy with the spirit of the 
magazine and admiration of its excellence. 

What will you do ? Can I keep you here in 
New York? 

Very truly yours, 

George William Curtis. 

The magazine itself was transferred to the 
house of Ticknor and Fields, in a fashion amus- 
ingly described in the Contributors* Club in No- 
vember, 1907. Both Lowell and Underwood 

[267] 



Park-Street Papers 

lingered in office for a while, the former until 
May, 1 86 1. J. L. Motley, writing to Under- 
wood from London on November ii, i860, 
in praise of the Atlantic, says, " I am writing this 
under the impression that you are still editor of 
the magazine." But the happiest part of Un- 
derwood's life was over. He now moved from 
Cambridge to South Boston. For many years 
he served as Clerk of the Superior Court, de- 
voting his spare hours to music and literature. 
His friends remained faithful, and the following 
polyglot note from Lowell, inviting him to an 
evening of whist with John Bartlett and John 
Holmes, is but one of the invitations which 
testify to the intimacy of such companionship. 

Elmwood, Thursday. 

My dear Underwood, — Come early and 
come often. J'ai tout arrange : les deux Jeans 
y seront de bonne heure, et nous en ferons une 
vraie nuit de vacances. Votre billet, tout cordial 
qu'iletait, et plein de bonte a mon regard, m'a 
vraiment rechauffe lecoeur. Vous trouverez un 
lit chez nous, et retournerez a la Cour Supe- 
rieure de bon matin, y portant un mal de tete 
des meilleurs, si le vieux Bourbon et les heures 
[ 268 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

tardes n'ont pas perdu de force. Venite, dunque, 
a che ora vi piacera, e sarete il benvenuto ! 
Affectionately yours, 

J. R. L. 

In 1 871 and 1 872 Underwood issued Hand- 
books of British and American authors, and the 
correspondence involved in these tasks, as well 
as in his biographies of Longfellow, Whittier, 
and Lowell, is well represented in his scrap- 
book. There are long letters, for example, from 
Parkman and Motley, setting forth their aims 
in the great historical undertakings to which 
their lives were so largely devoted. 

One passage from a letter of Parkman at- 
tempts to explain why Underwood had not 
enjoyed a greater prestige. He was "neither 
a Harvard man nor a humbug " ! 

50 Chestnut St., April \<y, 1875. 
My DEAR Mr. Underwood, — ... I wish 
that your connection with the Atlantic could 
have been continued long enough to give your 
literary powers and accomplishments a fair 
chance of just recognition. It is for the interest 
of us all that men like you should be rated 

[ ^69 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

for what they are worth. Harvard College and 
its social allies answer a very good purpose in 
defending us — to some extent — against the 
intellectual clap-trap and charlatanry which 
prosper so well throughout the country ; but 
those who are neither Harvard men nor hum- 
bugs may be said to be the victims of their own 
merit, having neither the prestige of the one nor 
the arts of the other. . . . 

With cordial regards. 

Very truly yours, 

F. Parkman. 

Occasionally a former contributor would 
write him a cordial note. One of these letters, 
from Rose Terry, inclosed a charming girlish 
photograph, — the only photograph preserved 
in the scrap-book. 

COLLINSVILLE, NoV. 28th, I 869. 

My dear Mr. Underwood, — Your letter 
of October 24th only reached me yesterday, 
and I am afraid you have thought me very 
uncivil. 

I am very glad to have the opportunity of 
doing even so little a thing for you, to whom 
I owe so much kindness and consideration 
[ 270 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

during our mutual engagements with the old 
Atlantic, which after all seems to me far better 
than the new! I congratulate you on having 
"drifted" out of literature, it is "weariness 
to the flesh" and small satisfaction to the 
spirit. The photograph I send you is one from 
a picture (an ambrotype) taken about the time 
when I first wrote for the Atlantic ; I send it 
because it is the prettiest one I ever had ; a 
feminine reason, but then I never was strong- 
minded. A picture now would be anything 
but pleasant, illness and anxiety for years are 
not beautifiers ! I hope at least the face may 
express to you all the good wishes I have for 
you and yours ; and be to you always the face 
of a friend even when its original has " gone 
over to the majority." 

Yours very cordially, 

Rose Terry. 

Of the letters of congratulation received upon 
Underwood's appointment as United States 
Consul at Glasgow, in 1885, Whittier's is 
worth printing, as showing that he, like Mot- 
ley, was under the impression that Underwood 
had been the Atlantic's first editor: — 

[ 271 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

HOLDERNESS, N. H., 

yth Mo. 27, 1885. 

My dear Underwood, — I have been 
away for some time trying to gain some strength 
from the hills, and have just seen a paragraph 
in the papers by which I am glad to learn of 
thy appointment as U. S. Consul at Glasgow. 
I am heartily rejoiced at it, and hasten to con- 
gratulate thee. President Cleveland has done 
a handsome thing in thus recognizing one of 
the " literary fellows " who had the honor of 
the first editorship of the Atlantic Monthly. 

I have been in Boston only once for the last 
year, and then only for a day or two. I wish 
I could see thee before thy departure for Glas- 
gow, but that is not possible in my state of 
health. I must not leave here during this hot 
weather. I am glad our country and its litera- 
ture is to be so well represented in the land 
of Burns and Scott. 

God bless thee and prosper thee ! 
Thy old friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

These later notes from Whittier refer to the 
biography upon which Underwood was en- 
[ 272 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

gaged. They are vigorous, and very charac- 
teristic. 

Amesbury, 4 Mo. 14, 1883. 

Dear fd., — . . . Don't make too big a 
book, and don't try to account for everything 
I have written or not written, or done, or not 
done. A mere mention of the fact that I have 
written in my first attempts a great [deal] of 
prose and rhyme which I would not now in- 
sult the reader by reproducing, is enough. 
And do not forget that I have lived a hard 
life outside of my verse making. I am a man 
and not a mere verse maker. Thine truly, 

John G. Whittier. 

Amesbury, 6 Mo» 14 [1883]. 
Dear F. H. Underwood, — . . . I see one 
of the chapters headed "Beginnings of Fame." 
I don't think at the time mentioned the word 
Fame is applicable. It is safe to say that there 
are now in the United States ten thousand boys 
and girls who can write better verses than mine 
at their age. The single fact is that my first 
scribblings are very poor and commonplace. 
Thine truly, 

John G. Whittier. 

[ 273 ] 



Park-Street Papers 

ASQUAM, HOLDERNESS, N. H., 

7 Mo. 21, 1883, 
Dear friend, — I am grateful for thy gen- 
erous estimate of my writings in " Character- 
istics," but I fear the critics will not agree with 
thee. Why not anticipate them, and own up 
to faults and limitations which everybody sees, 
and none more clearly than myself. Touch 
upon my false rhymes and Yankeeisms : con- 
fess that I sometimes " crack the voice of mel- 
ody and break the legs of time." Pitch into 
"Mogg Megone." That "big Injun" strut- 
ting round in Walter Scott's plaid, has no 
friends and deserves none. Own that I some- 
times choose unpoetical themes. Endorse Low- 
ell's " Fable for Critics " that I mistake oc- 
casionally simple excitement for inspiration. In 
this way we can take the wind out of the sails 
of ill-natured cavillers. I am not one of the 
master singers and don't pose as one. By the 
grace of God I am only what I am, and don't 
wish to pass for more. 

I return the sheets, with this note. Think 
of my suggestions and act upon them if it 
seems best to thee. Always thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

[ ^74 ] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

Amesbury, I Mo. 20, 1884. 
My dear Underwood, — I am very sorry 
to find thee lay so much stress on dragging to 
light all the foolish things written by me, and 
which I hate the thought of. For mercy's sake 
let the dead rest, (i) in regard to " Mogg 
Megone " (a poem I wish was in the Red Sea), 
— I know Benjamin had it, I thought in New 
York. It seems he was Ed. of the " N. E. 
Magazine " & published it there. (2) Abo- 
lition poem by Isaac Knapp. I know nothing 
of it. All my anti-slavery poems are in my 
collected works. I see no use in setting all 
the literary ghouls to digging for something I 
have written in my first attempts at rhyme. I 
detest the whole of it. , . . 

Ever and truly thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

Underwood's experiences in Great Britain, 
both at Glasgow and later at Edinburgh, — 
where he was Consul during Cleveland's second 
administration, — were touched upon in Mr. 
Trowbridge's article. Between the two con- 
sulships he wrote a novel, " Quabbin," in 
which he described from that benign distance 

[ 27s ] 



Park-Street Papers 

his native town. He received many social 
honors during his residence abroad, and the 
degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by 
the University of Glasgow. He made friends, 
as always and everywhere, and the most bril- 
liant of living English writers is represented 
in the scrap-book by some letters inquiring 
into the value of certain American securities, 
which Underwood had recommended him to 
purchase. To name these securities now might 
invoke the Comic Spirit. 

Underwood never came home to that world 
which had more or less grown away from him. 
He died at Edinburgh in 1894. Versatile in 
gifts and genial in spirit, he was associated, as 
we have seen, with some of the best men of 
his day, but he himself never quite "arrived." 
There were Celts of old time who "always went 
forth to the fight, but they always fell." One 
likes them none the worse for that. During the 
Civil War, Underwood's fertile brain devised 
a curious project, which had no other result, 
apparently, than the creation of one more re- 
markable autograph for his scrap-book. He 
wished to start a saw-mill in Florida. Every 
magazine editor, as is well known, has his mo- 

[276] 



The Editor who was never Editor 

ments of keen desire to be running a saw-mill 
somewhere. But Underwood picked out an 
actual spot, then under occupation by Federal 
troops, and addressed a respectful letter to 
President Lincoln, setting forth the benefits 
to the nation which would accrue from the said 
saw-mill through the promotion of emigration 
to Florida. Here is the very document, thrown 
carelessly into the scrap-book, endorsed by 
leading citizens of Boston, with Ex-Governor 
Boutwell at the head, by Charles Sumner and 
Henry Wilson, Senators from Massachusetts, 
by Major- General Gillmore, then at Hilton 
Head, and by the President of the United 
States : — 

I fully approve, subject to the discretion 
and control of the Commanding General. 
March 26, 1864. 

A. Lincoln. 

A saw-mill in Florida! What a castle in 
Spain, for this editor who was never theJEditor! 



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